TRUE sronjES 

OF 




S "%»r; 



/^ 



TRUE STORIES 



OF 



GREAT AMERICAN MEN 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 

TELLING IN SIMPLE LANGUAGE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 
THE INSPIRING STORIES OF THE LIVES OF 

George Washington Abraham Lincoln 

John Paul Jones Ulysses S. Grant 

Benjamin Franklin Robert E. Lee 

Patrick Henry James A. Garfield 

George Peabody Theodore Roosevelt 

And Others. 



By ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS 

AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLl 



PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED 



CHARLES FOSTER PUBLISHING COMPANY 

PHILADELPHIA. PA. 






■ hA:RYof niifJfiREssI 


fWO OOPIBS 


.'teceivtx: 


ifcp iO 


1905 


COPT S. 



ENTERED ACCORDING TO 
ACT OF CONGRESS, 1898- 
1904-1905 BY W. E. SCULL, 
IN THE OFFICE OF THE 
LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS, 
AT WASHINGTON, D. 0. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



INTRODUCTION. 



THERE is nothing which our boys and girls so much 
love to read, or have told to them, as true stories of 
the lives of great and noble people. This book gives 
such true stories. It deals especially with the early life of 
America's great men. It shows what were their natures 
and their habits when they were boys. It tells about their 
mothers and fathers and their homes ; it tells of the cir- 
cumstances which surrounded them and relates scores of 
incidents of their childhood days, and their daily doings, 
their jolly sports, their trials and difficulties and how they 
met and overcame them. It shows us what books they 
read, what schooling they had, how they came to be great 
and famous, and the wonderful things they did in the world. 
Every boy and girl who reads this inspiring volume will 
want to get out and do something in the w^orld. It is as 
charming and entertaining as a fairy tale, but every word of 
it is TRUE. It is written in easy language for the boys and 
girls of America. 



II 



CONTENTS. 



PA6B 



GEORGE WASHINGTON— His Boyhood Days and 

How HE Became the Father of His Country 17 

JOHN PAUL JONES— The Plucky Little Scotch- 
man, WHO Removed to America and Became 
Captain of our Navy 3-7 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN— The Candlemaker's Son 
WHO, WITH His Kite, Discovered Lightning 
TO BE THE Same as Electricity 53 

PATRICK HENRY— Who from a Farmer Boy Be- 
came A Lawyer and the Famous Orator of 
THE Revolution 81 

ROBERT FULTON— The Thinking Boy. The 

Builder of the First Successful Steamboat 107 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN— The Poor Boy, the Noble 

Man, the Preserver of the Union . . . .125 

ULYSSES S. GRANT— The Farmer Boy and the 

Hero of the Greatest of Modern Wars . .143 

ROBERT E. LEE— The Noble Boy, Brave Soldier 

AND Model Man. The Idol of the South . 159 

GEORGE PEABODY — The Boy Clerk who,when he 
Became Rich, Gave Millions to Charity. 
America's First Philanthropist 176 

THOMAS A. EDISON— The Greatest Electrician 

OF the World 201 

JAMES A. GARFIELD— The Boy on the Canal 

Boat. The Second Martyr President .. . 227 

13 



List of Illustrations, 



PAGB 

George Washington's Inaugural Proces- 
sion •. . . 17 

Young George Washington Riding a 

Colt 19 

General Braddock's Defeat 21 

Nomination of Washington as Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the Continental 

Army 23 

George Washington Crossing the Dela- 
ware 24 

General Washington at Valley Forge . 26 
Meeting of Washington and Rocham- 

beau 27 

George Washington's Inauguration . . 28 

George Washington, the First President 29 
George Washington's Bedroom, Mount 

Vernon, in which he Died .... 31 

Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia .... 33 

John Paul Jones 37 

John Paul Jones as a Sailor Boy .... 39 

John Paul Jones' men at Sea 41 

J. P. Jones Approaching Whitehaven . 43 

J. P. Jones' Men Ashore — Whitehaven 45 
Jones* Fight Between "Bon Homme 

Richard" and " Serapis " .... 47 

British Captain Surrendering Sword . . 49 
Franklin's Kite Leads the Way to the 

Modern Use of Electricity .... 53 
Ben. Franklin Moiilding Candles in his 

Father's Shop 57 

Franklin Slipping his Contributions to 

the Paper under the office Door . . 59 

Early Days in the Colonies 6i 

A Fashionable Chaise in which People 

Rode in the Days of Franklin ... 63 

Old-style Printing Press 65 

Wireless Telegraphy — Electricity as Ap- 
plied in the 20th Century 71 

Independence Hall, Philadelphia ... 73 



PAGB 

Dr. Benjamin Franklin as Minister to 

France 77 

Franklin's Grave, Corner Fifth and Arch 

Sts., Philadelphia 79 

Patrick Henry 81 

Patrick Henry Shooting a Deer .... 85 
" Often at the country parties he played 
the fiddle for many a jolly 'Old Vir- 
ginia Reel ' " 87 

' ' Many a day you might have seen Pat- 
rick plowing among his stumps in 

his ' New Ground ' " 91 

A Typical Virginia Courthouse in the 

Days of Patrick Henry 97 

An Old Virginia Mansion, common in 

the Time of Patrick Henry .... 99 
Patrick Henry Making His Speech be- 
fore the House of Burgesses . . . . lOI 
Development of Steam Navigation Fol- 
lowing Fulton's Discovery .... 107 
The " Oregon " Rushing Home . . . . 109 

James Watt m 

What You Would See To-day at a Steam- 
boat Landing on the Mississippi 

River 117 

" Chicago," one of the " White Squad- 
ron ' ' Warships of the United States 119 

Robert Fulton 121 

Model of a Modern U. S. Man-of-War . 123 
Abraham Lincoln's First Home .... 125 

The Boy Lincoln Studying 127 

Abraham Lincoln the Wrestler .... 130 
Abraham Lincoln, as Hired Man, Tell- 
ing a Story 131 

Abraham Lincoln Keeping Store ... 133 
Abraham Lincoln on the Flatboat ... 135 
Abraham Lincoln Entering Richmond . 137 

Abraham Lincoln I39 

Lincoln's Grave, Springfield, Illinois . 142 

15 



i6 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FAGB 

" I Propose to Move Immediately Upon 

Your Works."— Gen. U. S. Grant 143 
Ulysses S. Grant's Childkood Home . 145 
Ulysses S. Grant after the Battle of Bel- 
mont 147 

Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh 149 

Ulysses S. Grant 151 

Ulysses S. Grant at Windsor Castle . . 153 

Ulysses S. Grant in Japan 155 

President Grant's Funeral Procession . 157 

Tomb of U. S. Grant, New York ... 158 

Robert E. Lee as Cadet 159 

Young Lee Riding in Front of "Staf- 
ford," Va 161 

•'Lee always to be found where the 

fightiug was the fiercest " 163 

Captain Lee at Cerro Gordo 165 

General Lee Fortifying Richmond . . 167 
" He waved his sword above his head 

and dashed to the front " 169 

General Lee to the Rear 171 

Robert E.Lee 175 

George Peabody 179 

Modern Stores in Boston 181 

"Johnny Bull," or No. i, the First Lo- 
comotive Used . 183 

The First Friends' Meeting House, Bur- , 

lington, N. J 187 

The Bullock-Hoe Perfecting Press ... 189 

Memorial Hall, Harvard College ... 193 

Chapel of Yale College 197 

The Prince of Wales . , 199 

" I never did anything worth doing by 
-ccident, nor did any of my inven- 



rA«E 

tions come by accident." — Thomas 

A. Edison 201 

The Birthplace of Thomas A. Edison, at 

Milan, Ohio 203 

Thomas A. Edison when Publisher of 
the "Grand Trunk Herald," Fifteen 

Years Old 205 

Edison Experimenting in His Father's 

Cellar 209 

Edison as a Young Telegraph Operator 209 
Shop in which the First Morse Instru- 
ment was Constructed for Exhibi- 
tion before Congress 213 

The Triumphs of Electric Lighting as 
Seen at the Pan-American Exposi- 
tion at Buffalo in 1901 215 

Edison and His Great Invention . . . 217 
Mr. Marconi's Apparatus for Wireless 

Telegraphy 219 

Thomas A. Edison 223 

President James A. Garfield 227 

The Boy James A. Garfield Bringing His 

First Day's Earnings to His Mother 229 
Garfield's Birthplace and the Home of 

His Childhood 231 

Garfield on the Tow-path 233 

Garfield at the Age of Seventeen when 

he Entered the Seminary 235 

Hiram College, where Garfield went to 
School and of which he became 

President 237 

The Capitol, Washington, D. C 239 

Assassination of President Garfield . . 241 
Tablet in Waiting-room where Garfield 

was Shot 244 







The Inspiring History 



OF 



George Washington 



First President of the United States. 



DO you know what the twenty-second of February is? 
It is the birthday of George Washington. Do you 
know who George Washington was ? He was the 
greatest and best man that ever Hved in this dear 
home-land of yours, which you call America. 

He had no little boys or girls of his own, but he has always 
been called "The Father of His Country." Do you know 

(17) 



i8 GEORGE WASHINGTON 

why people call him that ? Let me tell you how he got this 
name. 

Many years ago, on the twenty-second of February, in the 
year 1732, a little baby was born in a comfortable-looking old 
farm-house down in Virginia. This baby was named George 
Washington. 

His father was a farmer, who planted and raised and sold 
large crops of tobacco in the fields about his house. These 
fields were called plantations, and George Washington's father 
was what is called a planter. 

The name of George's father was Augustine Washington. 
His mother's name was Mary Washington. She was a very 
wise and good woman and George loved her dearly. 

When George was a very small boy, his father died, and he 
was brought up by his mother in a nice, old farm-house on 
the banks of the Rappahannock River, just opposite the town 
of Fredericksburg. Ask some one to show you just where 
that is on the map. 

George was a good boy. He was honest, truthful, obedient, 
bold and strong. He could jump the farthest, run the fastest, 
climb the highest, wrestle the best, ride the swiftest, swim the 
longest, and *' stump" all the other boys he played with. 
They all liked him, for he was gentle, kind and brave ; he 
never was mean, never got " mad," and never told a lie. 

His mother had a sorrel colt that she thought very much 
of, because it came of splendid stock, and, if once trained, 
would be a fine and fast horse. But the colt was wild and 
vicious, and people said it could never be trained. One sum- 
mer morning, young George, with three or four boys, were in 
the field looking at the colt, and, when the boys said again 
that it could never be tamed, George said : " You help me get 
on his back and I'll tame him." 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



19 



After hard work they got a bridle-bit in the colt's mouth 
and put young George on its back. Then began a fight. 
The colt reared and kicked and plunged, and tried to throw 
George off. But George stuck on and finally conquered the 
colt so that he drove it about the field. But in a last mad 




YOUNG WASHINGTON RIDING A COLT. 



plunge to free itself from this determined boy on its back, the 
colt burst a blood-vessel and fell to the ground dead. 

Then the boys felt worried, you may be sure. But while 
they were wondering what George's mother would say, the 
boy went straight to the house determined to tell the truth. 



20 GEORGE WASHINGTON 

"Mother," he said, "your colt is dead." 

"Dead!" sajd his mother. "Who killed it?" 

" I did," said George, and then he told her the whole story. 

His mother looked at him a moment, then she said : " It 
is well, my son. I am sorry to lose the colt; it would have 
been a fine horse, but I am proud to know that my son never 
tries to put the blame of his acts upon others, and always 
speaks the truth." 

So you see, that early in his life, this boy was one to be 
depended upon. This story, too, shows you that besides his 
being so truthful and honest, young George Washington did 
not give up trying to do a thing until he had succeeded. He 
was bound to tame that fierce sorrel colt, and he stuck to it 
until he had conquered the animal, instead of letting it con- 
quer him. 

He loved the woods, and he loved the water. He wanted 
to be a sailor, but when he saw that his mother did not wish 
him to go away to sea, he said : "All right, mother," and he 
staid at home to help her on her farm. 

When he was sixteen years old he gave up going to school 
and became a surveyor. A surveyor is one who goes around 
measuring land, so that men can know just how much they 
own and just where the lines run that divide it from other 
people's land. 

This work kept George out of doors most of the time, and 
made him healthy and big and strong. He went off into the 
woods and over the mountains, surveying land for the owners. 
He lived among Indians and bears and hunters, and became 
a great hunter himself. He was a fine-looking young fellow 
then. He was almost six feet tall. He was strong and active, 
and could stand almost anything in the way of out-of-door 
dangers and experiences. He had light brown hair, blue 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 21 

eycr, and a frank face, and he had such a nice, firm way about 
him, although he was quiet and never talked much, that peo- 
ple always believed what he said, and those who w^orked with 
him were always ready and willing to do just as he told them. 
When he was a boy it took a brave man to be a surveyor. 
He had to live in the forests, in all sorts of dangers and risks; 



.fe-. 



\^^ 




BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT. 



he had to meet all kinds of people, and settle disputes about 
who owned the land, when those who were quarreling about 
it would be very angry with the surveyor. But young George 
Washington always won in the end, and his work was so well 



22 GEORGE WASHINGTON 

done that some of his records and measurements have not 
been changed from that day to this. 

He liked the work, because he liked the free life of the 
woods and mountains. He liked to hunt and swim and ride 
and row, and all these things and all these rough experiences 
helped him greatly to be a bold, healthy, active and courage- 
ous man, when the time came for him to be a leader and a 
soldier. 

People liked him so much that when there was trouble 
between the two nations that owned almost all the land in 
America when he was a boy, he was sent with a party to try 
and settle a quarrel as to which nation owned the land west 
of Virginia, in what is now called Ohio. 

These two nations were France and England. Their Kings 
were far over the Atlantic Ocean. Virginia and all the coun- 
try between the mountains and the sea, from Maine to Geor- 
gia, belonged to the King of England. There was no 
President then ; there were no United States. 

George Washington went off to the Ohio country and tried 
to settle the quarrel, but the French soldiers would not settle 
it as the English wished them to. They built forts in the 
country, and said they meant to keep it all for the King of 
France. 

So George Washington was sent out again. This time he 
had a lot of soldiers with him, to drive the French away from 
their forts. The French soldiers would not give in, and 
Washington and his soldiers had a fight with the French and 
whipped them. 

Then the French King sent more soldiers and built more 
forts, and the English King sent more soldiers, and there was 
war in the land. 

War is a terrible thing, but sometimes it has to be made. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



23 



The King of England was very angry with the French, and 
he sent over soldiers from England to fight the French. They 
were led by a British general whose name was Braddock. He 
was a brave man, but he thought he knew how to do every- 
thing, and he would not let anyone else tell him how he 
ought to act. But he had never fought in such a land as Amer- 
ica, where there were 
great forests and In- 
dians, and other 
things very different 
from what he was 
used to. 

George Washing- 
ton knewthat if Gen- 
eral Braddock and 
the British soldiers 
wished to whip the 
French and the In- 
dians, who were on 
the French side, they 
must be very careful 
when they were 
marching through 
the forest to battle. 
He tried to make 
General Braddock 
see this, too, but the British General thought he knew best, 
and he told Washington to mind his own business. 

So the British soldiers marched through the forest just as 
if they were parading down Broadway. They looked very 
fine, but they wxre not careful of themselves, and one day, in 
the midst of the forest, the French and Indians, who were 




NOMINATION OF WASHINGTON AS COMMANDER-IN- 
CHIEF OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY. 



24 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



hiding behind trees waiting for them, sprang out upon them 

and surprised them, and surrounded them and fired guns at 

them from the thick, dark woods. 

The British were caught in a trap. They did not know 

what to do. 
General 
Braddock 
was killed; 
so were 
many of his 
soldiers, and 
they would 
all have been 
killed or 
taken pri- 
s on er s if 
George 
Washington 
had not been 
there. H e 
knew just 
what to do. 
He fought 
bravely, and 
when the 
British sol- 
diers ran 
away, he and 

his Americans kept back the French and Indians and saved 

the British army. 

But it was a terrible defeat for the soldiers of the King of 

England. He had to send more soldiers to America and to 




-^- 



WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 25 

fight a long time. But at last his soldiers were successful, 
and, thanks to Colonel Washington, as he was now called, 
the English lands were saved and the French were driven 
away. 

After the war was over, George Washington married a wife. 
All American boys and girls know her name. It was Martha 
Washington. 

They went to live in a beautiful house on the banks of the 
Potomac River, in Virginia. It is called Mount Vernon. It 
was Washington's home all the rest of his life. The house 
is still standing, and people nowadays go to visit this beauti- 
ful place, just to see the spot that everyone thinks so much 
of because it was the home of Washington. Perhaps, some 
day, you will see it. You will think it a beautiful place, I 
am sure. 

While Washington was looking after his great farm at 
Mount Vernon, things were becoming very bad in America. 

The King of England said the people in America must do 
as he told them, and not as they wished. But the Americans 
said that the King was acting very wrongly towards them, and 
that they would not stand it. 

They did not. When the King's soldiers tried to make 
them do as the King ordered, they said they would die rather 
than yield, and in a place called Lexington, in Massachusetts, 
some of the Americans took their guns and tried to drive off 
the British soldiers. 

This is what is called rebellion. It made the King of Eng- 
land very angry, and he sent over ships full of soldiers to 
make the Americans mind. 

But the Americans would not. The men in the thirteen 
different parts of the country — called the thirteen colonies — 
got together and said they would fight the King's soldiers, if 



26 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



the King tried to make them do as he wished. So they got 
up an army and sent it to Massachusetts, and there they had 



UZ^^'-^' 




a famous battle 
soldiers, called 
Bunker Hill, 
the leading men 
saw that they 
man at the head 
There was but 
thought of for 
who — G e o r g e 
He rode all the 
Vernon, in Vir- 
brido^e, in Massa- 
horseback, be- 
they had no 
steamboats in 
he was riding 
cut, with a few 
guard, a man came galloping across 
pie how the Battle of Bunker Hill 




WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE. 



with the King's 
the Battle of 
After the battle, 
in the colonies 
must put a brave 
of their army, 
one man they 
this. You know 
Washington, 
way from Mount 
ginia, to Cam- 
chusetts, on 
cause, you know, 
steam -cars or 
those days. As 
through Connecti- 
soldiers as his 



the country, tellim 
had been fought. 



The 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



27 



British soldiers had driven the Americans from the fort, and 
said they had won. But it had been hard work for the sol- 
diers of the King. 

Washington stopped the rider and asked him why the 
Americans had been driven out of the fort. 

"Because they had no powder and shot left," replied the 
messenger. 

"And did they stand 
the fire of the British 
guns as long as they 
could fire back?" asked 
Washington. 

"That they did," re- 
plied the horseman. 
"They waited, too, un- 
til the British were close 
to the fort, before they 
fired. 

That was what 
Washington wished to 
know. He felt certain 
that if the American 
farmer boys who stood 
out against the King's 
soldiers did not gfet 

O MEETING OF WASHINGTON AND ROCHAMBEAU 

frightened or timid in "^''° commanded the soldie_rs^of France who came to help the 

the face of the trained soldiers of the King, that they would 
be the kind of soldiers he needed to win with. 

He turned to his companions, "Then the liberties of the 
country are safe," he said, and rode on to Cambridge to take 
command of the army. 

If ever you go to Cambridge, in Massachusetts, you can see 




28 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



the tree under which Washington sat on horseback, when he 
took command of the American army. 

It is an old, old tree now, but everybody loves to look at 

y — -"--,.. it and to think of the splendid-look- 

^'^'^n *""*"! 'O^ ^"^ soldier, in his uniform of buff and 

! n[nr3^- - '' ; ^^^^^' ^^^^' °^ ^ -^^^y ^^y^ ^°"^' ^^"^ 

^IBljW MW\ ago, sat his horse so gallantly be- 

neath that shady elm, and looked at 





' — - 


r^ 


i' 


■ T 




' y-' 


'f 


\ 




^ffm\ 






WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 



the brave men who were to be his soldiers, and by whose help 
he hoped to make his native land a free and independent 
nation. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



29 



So, at his camp at Cambridge, he drilled his army of farm- 
ers and fishermen, and when he was ready he drove the Brit- 
ish away from Boston without a battle, when all the American 
leaders met in the City of Philadelphia and said they would 
obey the King of England no longer, but would set up a 
nation of their own. 

They called this new nation the United States of America, 
and they signed a paper 
that told all the world that 
the men of America would 
no longer obey the King 
of England, but would be 
free, even if they had to 
fight for their freedom. 
You know what this great 
paper they signed is called 
— the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. 

The day that they de- 
cided to do this is now the 
greatest day in all America. 
You remember it every 
year, and celebrate it with 
fire-crackers and fire-works 
and flags, and no school. 
It is the fourth of July. 

Well, the King of England was very angry at this. He 
sent more ships and soldiers over the sea to America, and 
there was a long and bloody war. It was called the Ameri- 
can Revolution. 

There was fighting for seven years, and, through it all, the 
chief man in America, the man who led the soldiers and 




GEORGE WASHINGTON, THE FIRST PRESIDENT. 



30 GEORGE WASHINGTON 

fought the British, and never gave up, nor ever let himself or 
his soldiers grow afraid, even when he was beaten, was Gen- 
eral George Washington. 

If the British drove him away from one place, he marched 
to another, and he fought and marched, and kept his army 
brave and determined, even when they were ragged and tired, 
and everything looked as if the British would be successful. 

When the British whipped him in the Battle of Long Island, 
at Brooklyn, and thought they had caught all the American 
army, Washington, one stormy night, got all his soldiers 
safely across the river to New York, and the British had to 
follow and fight. And, again, when it looked as if the Ameri- 
cans must surely give in, Washington took his soldiers, one 
terrible winter's night, across the Deleware river and fell 
upon the British, when they were not expecting him, and 
won the battle of Trenton. 

There were many hard and bitter days for George Wash- 
ington through these years of fighting. One winter, especi- 
ally, was very bad. The British soldiers seemed victorious 
everywhere. They held the chief cities of New York and 
Philadelphia, and the weak American army was half-starved, 
cold and shivering in a place in Pennsylvania, called Valley 
Forge. Washington was there, too, and it took all his strength 
and all his heart to keep his soldiers together and make them 
believe that, if they would only "stick to it," they would 
beat the British at last. But when their loQf huts" were all 
covered with snow, and they had hardly clothes enough to 
keep them warm, or food to keep them from being hungry, 
it was not easy for the soldiers to see victory ahead, and, if 
it had not been for Washington, the American army would 
have melted away, owing to that dreadful winter at Valley 
Forge. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



31 



But he held it together, and when spring came, marched away 
from Valley Forge. Part of his army was attacked by the 
British at a place called Monmouth Court House, and was 
almost beaten and driven back, when General Washington 
came galloping up. He stopped the soldiers who were run- 
ning away ; he brought up other soldiers to help them, and 
he fought so boldly and bravely, and was so determined, that 
at last he drove off the British, and won the important batde 
of Monmouth. 
You see, 
Wash- 
ington 
s i m p 1 y ^^ 
would; 

not give \ * 

in when 

peoplef I 

told him! I 

he would ' ; 

have to. - -^r ^ 

and that 
the Brit- 
ish would WASHINGTON'S BEDROOM, MOUNT VERNON, IN WHICH HE DIED. 

get all the cities and towns. He said that the country was 
large, and, that sooner than give in, he would go with his 
soldiers into the mountains and keep up the war until the 
British were so sick of it that they would finally go away. 

So he kept on marching and fighting, and never giving in, 
even when things looked worst, and, at last, on the 19th of 
October, in the year 1781, he captured the whole British army, 
at a place called Yorktown, in Virginia, and the Revolution 
was ended. 





32 GEORGE WASHINGTON 

So the United States won their freedom. They have been 
a great nation sver since, and every American, from that day 
to this, knows that they gained their freedom because they 
had such a great, brave, noble, patriotic, strong and glorious 
leader as General George Washington. 

After the Revolution was over, and Washington had said 
good-bye to his soldiers and his generals, he went back to 
Mount Vernon and became a farmer again. 

But the people of America would not let him stay a farmer. 
They got together again in Philadelphia, and, after much 
thought and talk, they drew up a paper that said just how the 
new nation should be governed. This is called the Consti- 
tution of the United States. 

The Constitution said that, instead of a king, the people 
should pick out — elect is w^hat they called it — one man, who 
should be head man of the nation for four years at a time. He 
was to preside over things, and so he was called the President. 

When the time came to elect the first President, there w^as 
just one man in the United States that everybody said must 
be the President. Of course you know who this man was — 
George Washington. 

It was a great day for the new nation when he was declared 
President. This is what we call being "inaugurated." All 
along the way, as he rode from Mount Vernon to New York, 
people came out to welcome 'him. They fired cannon and 
rang bells, and made bonfires and put up arches and decora- 
tions ; little girls scattered flowers in his path and sang songs 
of greeting, and whenever he came to a town or city, every 
one turned out and marched in procession, escorting Wash- 
ington through their town. 

When he came to New York, after he had crossed the bay 
in a big row boat, he went in a fine procession to a building 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



33 



called " Federal Hall," on Wall Street, and there he stood, 
on the front balcony of the building, in face of all the people, 
and, with his hand on an open Bible, he said he would be a 
wise and good and faithful President. Then the Judge, who 
had read to him the words he repeated, lifted his hand and 
cried out: "Long live George Washington, President of the 
United States!" A flag 
was run up to the cu- 
pola of the hall, cannon 
boomed, bells rang, 
and all the people 
cheered and cheered 
their hero and general, 
whom they had now 
made the head of the 
whole nation. 

So George Washing- 
ton became President 
of the United States. 
He worked just as hard 
to make the new nation 
strong and great and 
peaceful as he did when 
he led the army in the 
Revolution. 

People had all sorts of things to suggest. Some of those 
things were foolish, some were wrong and some would have 
been certain to have broken up the United States, and lost 
all the things for which the country fought in the Revolution. 

But Washington was at the head. He knew just what to 
do, and he did it. From the day when, in the City of New 
York, he was made President — that is what we call his 




CARPENTERS' HALL, PHILADELPHIA. 

■Where the Convention met which made the Constitution for the 

United States and over which George Washington presided. 



34 GEORGE WASHINGTON ^ 

inauguration — he gave all his thought and all his time and 
all his strength to making the United States united and pros- 
perous and strong. And, when his four years as President 
were over, the people would not let him give up, but elected 
him for their President for another four years. When Wash- 
ington was President, the Capital of the United States was 
first at New York and afterward at Philadelphia. Washing- 
ton and his wife, whom we know of as Martha Washington, 
lived in fine style, and made a very noble-looking couple. 
They gave receptions every once in a while, to which the peo- 
ple would come to be introduced and to see the man of whom 
all the world was talking. Whasington must have been a 
splendid looking man then. He was tall and well built. He 
dressed in black velvet, with silver knee and shoe buckles ; 
his hair was powdered and tied up in what was called a 
" queue." He wore yellow gloves, and held his three-cornered 
hat in his hand. A sword in a polished white leather sheath, 
hung at his side, and he would bow to each one who was 
introduced to him. He had so good a memory, that, if he 
heard a man's name and saw his face at one introduction, he 
could remember and call him by name when he met him 
again. But though he was so grand and noble, he was very 
simple in his tastes and his talk, and desired to have no title, 
but only this — the President of the United States. 

His second term as President was just as successful as his 
first four years had been. He kept the people from getting 
into trouble with other countries ; he kept them from war and 
danger, and quarrels and loss. 

But it tired him all out, and made him an old man before 
his time. He had given almost all his life to America. 

When his second term was ended, the people wished him to 
be President for the third time. But he would not. He wrote 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 35 

a long letter to the people of America. It is called "Wash- 
ington's Farewell Address." He told them they were grow- 
ing stronger and better, but that he was worn out and must 
have rest. He told them that if they would be wise and peace- 
ful and good, they would become a great nation ; that all they 
had fought for and all they had gained would last, if they would 
only act right, and so they would become great and powerful. 

So another man was made President, and Washington went 
back to his farm at Mount Vernon. He was the greatest, the 
wisest and the most famous man in all America. People said 
it was because of what he had done for them that their country 
was free and powerful and strong. They said that George 
Washington was "The Father of His Country." I think he 
was; don't you? He was very glad to get back to Mount 
Vernon. He loved the beautiful old place, and he had been 
away from it eight years. He liked to be a farmer, with such a 
great farm to look after as there are in Virginia. He found very 
much to do, and he mended, built and enlarged things, rode 
over his broad plantations, or received in his fine old house the 
visitors who came there to see the greatest man in all America. 

There came a time wdien he thought he would have to give 
up this pleasant life and go to be a soldier once more. For 
there came very near being a war between France and the 
United vStates, and Congress begged Washington to take com- 
mand of the army once more. He was made lieutenant general 
and commander in chief, and hurried to Philadelphia to gather 
his army together. Fortunately, the war did not occur, and 
the new nation was saved all that trouble and bloodshed. 

So he went back again to his beloved Mount Vernon. But 
he did not live long to enjoy the peace and quiet that were his 
right. For, one December day, as he was riding over his farm, 
he caught cold and had the croup. He had not the strength that 



36 GEORGE WASHINGTON 

most boys and girls have to carry him through such a sickness. 
He was worn out, and, though the doctors tried hard to save 
his Hfe, they could not, and in two days he died. It was a sad 
day for America — the twelfth day of December, in the year 1 799. 

All the world was sorry, for all the world had come to look 
upon George Washington as the greatest man of his time. 
Kings and nations put on mourning for him, and, all over the 
world, bells tolled, drums beat and flags were dropped to half- 
mast, when the news came that Washington was dead. 

When you grow up and go to Mount Vernon, as every Ameri- 
can boy and girl should do some day, you will see his tomb. 
It is a plain and simple building, just as plain and simple as he 
was, and it stands close to his house, on the green banks of the 
beautiful Potomac River he loved so much. Then, sailing up 
the Potomac, or riding on the steam-cars, you will come to the 
beautiful city that is named for this great man — Washington, 
the capital of the United States. Then you will see the great 
w^hite dome of the splendid Capitol, the building in which the 
American people make laws for the nation that Washington 
founded; there is the White House, where all the Presidents 
since his day have lived, there is the tall, white monument, — 
the highest in the world — that the American people have built 
to honor his memory and his name. 

And in the cities and towns in America are statues and streets 
and parks and schools and buildings named after him, and built 
because all the world knows that this great American general 
and President was the best, the noblest and the bravest man 
that ever lived in all America — Georcfe Washington, "first in 
war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." 

Love him, children. Never forget him. Try to be like him. 
Thus may you grow to be good men and women, and, there- 
fore, good Americans. 



THE ENTERTAINING HISTORY OF 

John Paul Jones, 

First Captain in the United States Navy. 




O 



NCE upon a time there 

lived in Scotland a 

poor gardener, who 

had a little son. The 

gardener s name was John Paul; 

that was his son's name, too. 

The rich man's garden that big 

John took care of was close by 

the sea, and little John Paul 

loved blue water so much that 

he spent most of his time near 

it, and longed to be a sailor. 

This blue water that little 
John Paul loved was the big 
bay that lies between Scotland 
and England. It is called Solway Firth. 

When little John Paul was born, on the sixth day of July, 
in the year 1747, both far-away Scotland, in which he lived, 
and this land of America, in which you live, were ruled by 
the King of England. 

(37) 



JOHN PAUL JONES. 



38 JOHN PAUL JONES 

The gardener's little son lived in his father's cottage near 
the sea until he was twelve years old. Then he was put to 
work in a big town, on the other side of the Solway Firth. 
This town was called Whitehaven. It was a very busy place, 
and ships and sailors were there so much and in such num- 
bers that this small boy, who had been put into a store, much 
preferred to go down to the docks and talk with the seamen, 
who had been in so many different lands and seas, and who 
could tell him all about the wonderful and curious places they 
had seen, and about their adventures on the great oceans they 
had sailed over. 

He determined to, go to sea. He studied all about ships 
and how to sail them. He studied and read all the books he 
could get, and when other boys were asleep or in mischief, 
little John Paul was learning from the books he read many 
things that helped him when he grew older. 

At last he had his wish. When he was but thirteen years 
old, he went as a sailor boy in a ship called the " Friendship." 

The vessel was bound to Virginia, in America, for a cargo 
of tobacco, and the little sailor boy greatly enjoyed the voy- 
age, and was especially delighted with the new country across 
the sea, to which he came. He wished he could live in 
America, and hoped some day to go there again. 

But when this first voyage was over, he returned to White- 
haven, and to the store where he worked. But, soon after, the 
merchant who owned the store failed in business, and the boy 
was out of a place and had to take care of himself So he 
became a real sailor, this time. For thirteen years he was a 
sailor. He was such a good one that before he was twenty 
years old he was a captain. This is how he became one. 
While the ship in which he was sailing was in the middle of 
the Atlantic Ocean, a terrible fever broke out. The captain 



JOHN PAUL JONES 



39 



died. The mate, who comes next to the captain, died ; all of 
the sailors were sick, and some of them died There was no 
one who knew about sailing such a big vessel, except young 
John Paul. So he took command, and sailed the ship into 
port without an accident, and the owners were so glad that 
they made the young sailor a sea captain. 




JOHN PAUL JONES AS A SAILOR BOY. 

John Paul had a brother living in Virginia, on the banks of 
the Rappahannock River. This is the same river beside 
which George Washington lived when he was a boy. John 
Paul visited his brother several times while he was sailing on 
his voyages, and he liked the country so much that, when his 
brother died, John Paul gave up being a sailor for a while, 
and went to live on his brother's farm. 
3 



-40 JOHN PAUL JONES 

When he became a farmer he changed his name to Jones. 
And so Httle John Paul became known ever after, to all the 
world as John Paul Jones. 

While he was a farmer in Virginia, the American Revolu- 
tion broke out. I have told you about this in the story of 
General George Washington, who led the army of the Uni- 
ted States to victory. . 

John Paul Jones was a sailor even more than he was a far- 
mer. So, when war came, he wished to fight the British on 
the sea. This was a bold thing to do, for there was no nation 
so powerful on the sea as England. The King had a splen- 
did lot of ships of war — almost a thousand. The United 
States had none. But John Paul Jones said we must have one. 

Pretty soon the Americans got together five little ships, and 
sent them out as the beginning of the American navy, to fight 
the thousand ships of England. 

John Paul Jones was made first lieutenant of a ship called 
the "Alfred." The first thing he did was to hoist for the first 
time on any ship, the first American flag. This flag had thir- 
teen red and white stripes, but instead of the stars that are 
now on the flag, it had a pine tree, with a rattlesnake coiled 
around it, and underneath were the words: "Don't tread 
on me!" 

The British sea captains who did try to tread on that rattle- 
snake flag was terribly bitten, for John Paul Jones was a brave 
man and a bold sailor. When he was given command of a 
little war sloop, called the Providence, he just kept those Brit- 
ish captains so busy trying to catch him that they could not 
get any rest. He darted up and down Long Island Sound, 
carrying soldiers and guns and food to General Washington, 
and, although one great British war ship, the "Cerberus," tried 
for weeks to catch him, it had to give up the chase, for John 



JOHN PAUL JONES 



41 



Paul Jones could not be caught. For all this good work, this 
bold sailor was made Captain Jones, of the United States 
Navy, and it is said that he was tHe first captain made by 
Congress. 

He sailed up and down the coast, hunting for British ves- 
sels. He hunted so well that in one cruise of six weeks he 
captured sixteen vessels, or " prizes," as they were called, and 
destroyed many others. Among these was one large vessel, 




PAUL JONES' MEN AT SEA. 

loaded with new warm clothing for the British army. Captain 
Jones sent the vessel and its whole cargo safely into port, and 
the captured clothes were all sent to the American camp, and 
were worn by Washington's ragged soldiers. 

The next year Captain Jones sailed away to France in a 
fine new ship called the ** Ranger." Before he sailed out of 
Portsmouth Harbor, in New Hampshire, he "ran up" to the 
masthead of the ** Ranger" the first ** Stars and Stripes" ever 



42 JOHN PAUL JONES 

raised over a ship — ^Washington's real American flag with its 
thirteen stripes and its thirteen stars. 

He went to France and had a talk with Dr. Benjamin 
Franklin, the great American who got France to help the 
United States in the Revolution. Then, after he had sailed 
through the whole French fleet, and made them all fire a salute 
to the American flag — it was the first salute ever given it by 
a foreign nation — he steered away for the shores of England, 
and so worried the captains and sailors and storekeepers and 
people of England that they would have given anything to 
catch him. ' But they couldn't. 

The English king and people had not supposed the Ameri- 
cans would fight. Especially, they did not believe they would 
dare to fight the English on the sea, for England was the 
strongest country in the world in ships and sailors. So they 
despised and made fun of "Yankee sailors," as they called 
the Americans. But when Captain John Paul Jones came 
sailing in his fine ship, the " Ranger," up and down the coasts 
of England, going right into English harbors, capturing Eng- 
lish villages and burning English ships, the people began to 
think differently. 

They called Captain Jones a "pirate," and all sorts of hard 
names. But they were very much afraid of him and his stout 
ship. He was not a pirate, either. For a pirate is a bold, 
bad sea robber, who burns ships and kills sailors just to get 
the money himself But John Paul Jones attacked ships and 
captured sailors, not for selfish money-getting, but to show 
how much Americans could do, and to break the power of the 
English navy on the seas. So, this voyage of his, along the 
shores of England, taught the Englishmen to respect and fear 
the American sailors. 

After he had captured many British vessels, called "prizes," 



JOHN PAUL JONES 



43 



almost ill sight of their homes, he boldly sailed to the north 
and into the very port of Whitehaven, where he had "tended 
store," as a boy, and from which he had first gone to sea. 
He knew the place, of course. He knew how many vessels 
were there, and what a splendid victory he could win for the 
American navy, if he could sail into Whitehaven harbor and 
capture or destroy the two hundred vessels that were anchored 
within sifjht of the town he remembered so well from childhood. 




JONES APPROACHING WHITEHAVEN, EARLY MORNING. 

With two row-boats and thirty men he landed at White- 
haven, locked up the soldiers in the forts, fixed the cannon 
so that they could not be fired, set fire to the vessels that were 
in the harbor, and so frightened all the people that, though 
the gardener's son stood alone on the wharf, w^aiting for a boat 
to take him off, not a man dared to lay a hand on him. 

Then he sailed across the bay to the house of the great lord 
for whom his father had worked as a gardener. He meant 



44 JOHN PAUL JONES 

to run away with this great man, and keep him prisoner until 
the British promised to treat better the Americans whom they 
had taken prisoners. But the great lord whom he went for 
found it best to be **not at home," so all that Captain Jones' 
men could do was to carry off from the big house some of the 
fine things that were in it. But Captain Jones did not like 
this ; so he got the things back and returned them to the rich 
man's wife, with a nice letter, asking her to excuse his men. 

But while he was carrying on so in Sol way Firth, along 
came a great British warship, called the "Drake," determined 
to gobble up poor Captain Jones at a mouthful. But Captain 
Jones was not afraid. This was just what he was looking for. 
"Come on!" he cried; "I'm waiting for you." 

The British ship dashed up to capture him, but the " Ranger" 
was all ready, and in just one hour Captain Jones had beaten 
and captured the English frigate, and then, with both vessels, 
sailed merrily away to the friendly French shores. 

Soon after this, the French decided to help the Americans 
in their war for independence. So, after some time, Captain 
Jones was put in command of five ships, and back he sailed 
to England, to fight the British ships again. 

The vessel in which Captain Jones sailed was the biggest 
of the five ships. It had forty guns and a crew of three hun- 
dred sailors. Captain Jones thought so much of the great Dr. 
Benjamin Franklin, who wrote a book of good advice, under 
the name of "Poor Richard," that he named his big ship for 
Dr. Franklin. He called it the "Bon Homme Richard," 
which is French for "good man Richard." The "Bon Homme 
Richard " was not a good boat, if it was a big one. It was old 
and rotten and cranky, but Captain Jones made the best of it. 

The little fleet sailed up and down the English coasts, cap- 
turing a few prizes, and greatly frightening the people by 



JOHN PAUL JONES 



45 



saying that they had come to burn some of the big Enghsh 
sea towns. 

Then just as they were about sailing back to France, they 
came — near an English cape, called Flamborough Head— 




.^S.' 




JONES' MEN ASHORE— WHITEHAVEN. 

upon a great English fleet of forty merchant vessels and two 
war ships. 

One of the war ships was a great English frigate, called 
the "Serapis," finer and stronger every way than the ''Bon 
Homme Richard." But Captain Jones would not run away. 

" What ship is that ? " called out the Englishman. '' Come 



46 JOHN PAUL JONES 

a little nearer, and we'll tell you," answered plucky Captain 
Jones. 

The British ships did come a little nearer. The forty mer- 
chant vessels sailed as fast as they could to the nearest harbor, 
and then the war ships had a terrible sea fight. 

At seven o'clock in the evening the British frigate and the 
"Bon Homme Richard" began to fight. They banged and 
hammered away for hours, and then, when the British captain 
thought he must have beaten and broken the Americans, and 
it was so dark and smoky that they could only see each other 
by the fire flashes, the British captain, Pearson, called out to 
the American captain: ''Are you beaten ? Have you hauled 
down your flag?" 

And back came the answer of Captain John Paul Jones : *'I 
haven't begun to fight yet!" 

So they went at it again. The two ships were now lashed 
together, and they tore each other like savage dogs in a terri- 
ble fight. O, it was dreadful ! 

At last, when the poor old "Richard" was shot through and 
through, and leaking, and on fire, and seemed ready to sink. 
Captain Jones made one last effort. It was successful. Down 
came the great mast of the "Serapis," crashing to the deck. 
Then her guns were quiet ; her flag came tumbling down, as 
a sign that she gave in. At once, Captain Jones sent some of 
his sailors aboard the defeated "Serapis." The captured ves- 
sel was a splendid new frigate, quite a different ship from the 
poor, old, worm-eaten and worn-out "Richard." 

One of the American sailors went up to Captain Pearson 
the British commander, and asked him if he surrendered. The 
Englishman replied that he had, and then he and his chief 
officer went aboard the battered " Richard," which was sink- 
ing even in its hour of victory. 



JOHN PAUL JONES 



47 



But Captain Jones stood on the deck of his sinking vessel, 
proud and triumphant. He had shown what an American 
captain and American sailors could do, even when everything 
was against them. The English captain gave up his sword 
to the American, which is the way all sailors and soldiers do 
when they 
surrender 
their ships 
or their 




armies. 
The fight 


■ 


had been 


? 


a brave 


J 


one, and 


' 


the Eng- 


': I . 


lish King 


h' 


knew that 




his captain 




had made 




a bold and 




desperate 


i 


resistance, 




even if he 




had been 




whipped. 


V^^^^ 


So he re- 


• "V^- :. ^v: : s-^ii.k'^---'^ 


warded 


THE TIGHT BETWEEN 




BON HOMME RICHARD" AND "SERAPIS." 

Captain Pearson, when he at last returned to England, by giving 
him the title of "Sir," and when Captain Jones heard of it he 
laughed and said: "Well, if I can meet Captain Pearson 
again in a sea fight, I'll make a 'lord' of him." For a "lord" 
is a higher title than "sir." 



48 JOHN PAUL JONES 

The poor *' Bon Homme Richard" was shot through and 
through, and soon sank beneath the waves. But even as she 
went down, the Stars and Stripes floated proudly from the 
masthead, in token of victory. 

Captain Jones, after the surrender, put all his men aboard the 
captured " Serapis," and then off he sailed to the nearest friendly 
port, with his great prize and all his prisoners. This victory 
made him the greatest sailor in the whole American war. 

The Dutch port into which he sailed was not friendly to 
America, but Captain Jones had made his name so famous as 
a sea fighter, that neither the thirteen Dutch frigates inside the 
harbor, nor the twelve British ships outside, dared to touch 
him, and, after a while — when he got good and ready — Cap- 
tain Jones ran the Stars and Stripes to the masthead and, while 
the wind was blowing a gale, sailed out of the harbor, right 
through two big British fleets, and so sailed safely to France, 
with no one bold enough to attack him. 

He had made a great record as a sailor and sea fighter. 
France was on America's side in the Revolution, you know, 
and when Captain Jones went to France after his great vic- 
tory, he was received with great honor. 

Everybody wished to see such a hero. He went to the King's 
court, and the King and Queen and French lords and ladies 
made much of him and gave him fine receptions, and said so 
many fine things about him that if he had been at all vain, it 
might have "turned his head," as people say. But John 
Paul Jones was not vain. 

He was a brave sailor, and he was in France to get help 
and not compliments. He wished a new ship to take the 
place of the old "Richard," which had gone to the bottom 
after its great victory. 

So, though the King of France honored him and received 



JOHN PAUL JONES 



49 





him splendidly and made him presents, he kept on working 
to get another ship. At last he was made captain of a new 
ship, called the ** Ariel," and sailed from France. He had a 
fierce battle with an English ship called the "Triumph," and 

defeated .-; ' '^' ■ \ 

her. But 
she es- 
caped be 
fore s u r 
rendering, 
and Cap 
tain Jones 
sail e d 
across the 
sea to 
America. 

He was 
received 
with great 
honor and 
applause. 
Congress 
gave him 
a vote of 
thanks 
"for the 
zeal, pru- 
dence and intrepidity with which he had supported the honor 
of the American flag" — that is what the vote said. 

People everywhere crowded to see him, and called him hero 
and conqueror. Lafayette, the brave young Frenchman, you 
know, who came over to fight for America, called him "my 




^^ 



THE BRITISH CAPTAIN SURRENDERING HIS SWORD TO PAUL JONES. 



50 JOHN PAUL JONES 

dear Paul Jones," and Washington and the other leaders in 
America said, "Well done, Captain Jones ! " 

The King of France sent him a splendid reward of merit 
called the ** Cross of Honor," and Congress set about build- 
ing a fine ship for him to command. But before it was fin- 
ished, the war was over, and he was sent back to France on 
some important business for the United States. After he had 
done this, the Russians asked him to come and help them fight 
the Turks. This was often done in those days when soldiers 
and sailors of one country went to fight in the armies or navies 
of another. 

Captain Jones said he would be willing to go if the United 
States said he could, "for," he said : " I can never renounce the 
Sflorious title of a citizen of the United States." The United 
States said he could go to Russia, but the British officers who 
were fighting for Russia, refused to serve under Jones, because, 
as they said, he was a rebel, a pirate and a traitor. You see, 
they, had not forgiven him for so beating and frightening the 
English ships and people in the Revolution. And they called 
him these names because he, born in Scotland, had fought 
for America. 

They made it very unpleasant for Captain Jones, and he had 
so hard a time in Russia that, after many wonderful adven- 
tures and much hard fighting, at last he gave up, and went 
back to France. 

He was taken sick soon after he returned to France, and, 
though he tried to fight against it, he could not recover. He 
had gone through so many hardships and adventures and 
changes that he was old before his time, and although his 
friends tried to help him and the Queen of France sent her 
own doctor to attend him, it was no use. 

He died on the eighteenth day of July, in the year 1792, 



JOHN PAUL JONES 51 

when he was but forty-five years old. He was buried in Paris, 
with great honor. The French people gave him a great 
funeral, as their token of respect and honor, and the French 
clergyman who gave the funeral oration said : ** May his 
example teach posterity the efforts which noble souls are cap- 
able of making when stimulated by hatred to oppression." 

John Paul Jones was a brave and gallant man. He fought 
desperately, and war is a dreadful thing, you know. But as 
I have told you, sometimes it has to be, and then it must be 
bold and determined. Captain Jones did much by his dash 
and courage to make America free. He gave her strength 
and power on the seas. 

He fought twenty-three naval battles, made seven attacks 
upon English ports and coasts, fought and captured four great 
war ships, larger than his own, and took many valuable prizes 
— to the loss of England and the glory of America. 

American boys and girls know too little about him. If you 
are to learn about those who have fought for America on land 
and sea, you must surely hear of him who was the first cap- 
tain in the United States Navy, and whose brave deeds and 
noble heroism is the heritage and example of American sail- 
ors for, all time. 

' ' I have ever looked out for the honor of the American flag, 
he said, and Americans are just beginning to see how much 
this first of American sailors did for their liberty, their honor 
and their fame. Some day they will know him still more, and 
in one of the great cities of this land which he helped to save 
from destruction in those early days, a noble statue will be 
built to do honor to Captain John Paul Jones — the man who 
was one of the bravest and most successful sea fighters in the 
history of the world. 





W'^ 



s.*!m- 



FRANKLIN S KIT "<; LEADS THE 

WAY TO THE MODERN USE 

OF ELECTRICITY. 



Benjamin 



Franklin, 

The Candlemaker's Son, who with 

his Kite Discovered that Lightning 

is an Electric 5park. 



DID any of my little readers ever look at a lightning 
rod putting up from the roof of a house, and do you 
know what that lightning rod is for ? I will tell you. 
When you hear the thunder in the heavens, there is 
a strong force which darts out in zigzag lines of fire, and if 
it strikes anything like a tree or house, it tears it to pieces, 
and perhaps sets it on fire; but if it strikes a person or an 
animal, it does not break even the skin, but passes through 
them in the twinkling of an eye and often kills them. This 
strange force most people call lightning, and the lightning 
rod is put on the house to catch it and to carry it down into 



the earth before it strikes the building. 



53 



54 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

Two hundred years ago nobody knew how to catch the 
hgntning, and everybody stood in great dread of it. Now we 
know how to catch it and carry it away from our houses, and 
we also know how to make it run along wires and carry mes- 
sages from one friend to another so fast that, if you were a 
thousand miles away, your friend, if he were at the end of the 
wire, would be receiving the message while you were at the 
other end sending it. 

We have also learned how to make it carry the human 
voice for a thousand miles, so that if you were in New York 
you might step up to a little box, called the telephone, and 
talk into it, and your mother, father, or friend could hear your 
words plainly in Chicago, nearly a thousand miles away. It 
would pass so quickly that you and they could talk back and 
forth almost as easy and quickly as if you were in the same 
room. We also make this wonderful force pull our street-cars 
through our great cities, thus setting free the horses that used 
to have to do it. We also make it light our streets and 
houses, and we call it electricity 

Is this not a very strange and a very wonderful power ? And 
would you not like to hear the story of the great man who first 
caught from the skies this vivid, flashing lightning, and found 
out that he could harness it, almost as easily as we can har- 
ness a horse, and make the very thing which people had always 
dreaded as a terrible destroyer, the best friend and servant of 
man? Did you say you would like to hear his story ? I will 
tell it to you. His name was Benjamin Franklin. 

A very long time ago, perhaps about four hundred years, 
there lived in Northamptonshire, England, a poor blacksmith 
whose name was Franklin. In that country at that time, the 
oldest son always followed the same trade or work which his 
father followed. So the oldest son in the Franklin family 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 55 

always became a blacksmith, and he always got the property 
which belonged to his father when the father died. The other 
children had to get out and shift for themselves. The young- 
est son in one of the large Franklin families was named Josiah. 
He couldn't be a blacksmith, as his older brother took up that 
business and inherited his father's shop. So Josiah went out 
and gave himself to a man who made soap and tallow candles, 
and agreed to serve him, without any pay except his board and 
clothes, until he was twenty-one years of age. 

All this he did that he might learn the trade of a soap-boiler 
and candle-maker. When he was twenty-one his employer 
gave him, as was the custom, a new suit of clothes, a few dol- 
lars for his personal use, and a letter saying that he had learned 
his trade well. With that letter to show, young Josiah was 
able to go and hire himself to work where he could get pay for 
his labor. The hired man nearly always lived in his employ- 
er's family, and received his board and a few dollars per month. 

After a little while, Josiah was married and continued to 
live in England and work at his trade until his wages were 
hardly sufficient to support himself, his wife and three children 
on the coarsest kind of food. He did, however, save up, in 
his earlier years, a little money, and the stories of the New 
World — America — kept coming to his ears. He heard that 
there were few candlemakers and soap-boilers in America, and 
that a young man who understood his trade would have a 
much better chance here than in England ; so in the year 1682, 
a little more than two hundred years ago, he took his wife 
and three children, and such clothing, bedding and household 
things as they could bring, on board a big sailing vessel and 
came to America. He landed in Boston, and soon set him- 
self up as a soap and candlemaker. He found it much easier 
to support his family here than in the old country, and he 
4 



56 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

became very much in love with his new home. In the year 
1706, twenty-four years after Josiah Franklin and his wife and 
three children came to America, a little baby boy was born. 
Like his father, he proved to be the last child in the family, 
and his father named him Benjamin. You remember Jacob's 
youngest son was named Benjamin. But Ben Franklin had 
sixteen brothers and sisters older than himself Don't you 
think that was a big family ? Seventeen boys and girls besides 
the mother and father ! But you must remember they were 
not all then in the house. The oldest of his brothers was 
nearly thirty years of age when Ben was born, and they had 
gone into various kinds of business for themselves. 

Benjamin was a good boy and his father loved him very 
much ; you know how parents often love the youngest the 
best The little fellow learned to read when he was very 
young, but he was sent to school only for two years, and then 
he was taken away, when he was only ten years of age to work 
in his father's candle-shop. His business was to cut wicks 
for the candles, fill the moulds with the melted tallow, tend the 
shop and run the errands. But "Ben," as he was called, did 
not like this business. He would very much rather look in 
picture books and read the easy stories. He always loved to 
go down to the water's edge, and he often did an errand very 
quickly, running all the way to save some time, that he might 
jump in a boat or go swimming with the boys. 

Thus he learned to handle a boat and to be an expert swim- 
mer. He had heard the sailors talk about far-away countries, 
and the strange people and wonderful sights, and he thought it 
would be a splendid thing to be a sailor, and he told his father 
how much he would like to be one and go to sea. But his 
father would not consent, and so Benjamin, like an obedient 
son, gave it up, though he often lay awake at nights and thought 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



57 



how grand it would be to bound over the great billows and to 
visit all the ^H||_gM_|^_H countries of the world. 
Sometimes he ^^^^^^^^^^^^H would dream he 
away on the ^^^^^H^^^^JV ocean and would wake 
uptofindhim- H|P^HV |M self in his own little bed. 

was also a great lover 
Every chance he got, 
tie boy companions 



Frankli n 
of fi s h i n g . 
he and his lit- 
would get out 
up their pants, 



their lines, and, rolling 




would 

wade into l. 

the marsh and hsh in a 
mill-pond. Sometimes 
the water was too cold, 
and besides he had heard 
it was not healthy to stand 
in the water. So he said 
to the boys that it would 

be a good thing to build "^^^ franklin^moulding^candles m his 



58 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

a wharf to stand on as the men did for their work about the 
water. They all thought so too. 

There was a pile of stones not far away which were to be 
used to build a new house. So they said the men could get 
more for themselves, or, perhaps, they had more than they 
wanted ; and in the evening, when the men quit work the 
boys slipped out — for they knew it was not just right — and 
they carried enough of these stones away to make them a 
good pier far out into the water. 

Next day when the workmen came they wondered where 
their rocks had gone. Upon searching around, they found 
what the mischievous boys had done, and, as they had seen 
them there often fishing, they knew just who had done it and 
went straight to their parents about it. Some of the mothers 
and fathers only laughed, but Mr. Franklin took Ben aside 
and began to lecture him. Ben tried to argue with his father 
that the pier was very necessary as it kept the boys' feet dry 
while they fished, and he pretended to think it was a good 
thing they had done. But Mr. Franklin told him that noth- 
ing was good or right that was not honest, and, to impress the 
lesson on his mind, he gave Benjamin a sound thrashing and 
forbade his fishing there any more. Ever after that, Ben was 
an honest boy and an upright man. 

But Ben did not get over his desire to go to sea. He did 
not dare to ask permission, but he was always talking about 
what the sailors said, and using words which showed he had 
learned the different sails and miuch about ships. So his father 
grew afraid that his son would run away and go to sea as one 
of his other sons had already done. One day after Ben had 
been in the tallow-candle shop for two years — and was now 
ten years old — his father began to talk with him about other 
trades. He took him frequently to walk and they would stop 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 59 

to look at different kinds of workmen, such as bricklayers, 
carpenters, iron-workers and many others. He hoped the boy 
would like some of these better than tlie life of a sailor, but 
Benjamin did not 
care for any of them. 
By this time he 
had, however, grown 
very fond of reading. 
He poured over his 
father's dull books 
and sold little things 
of his own to buy 
more. Often he 
w^ould trade his old 
books at the second- 
hand book-stores for 
others he 
had not 
read. So 
Mr. Frank- 
lin, seeing 
he was so 
fond of read- 
ing books, 
thought it 
was best to 

, THE BOY FRANKLIN SLIPPING HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE PAPER 

make a under the office door. 

printer of him. His oldest son, James Franklin, already had 
a printing office and press. Benjamin said he would like this 
trade, so he was apprenticed to his brother to learn it. 

When we say Ben was "apprenticed " we mean he was given 
to his brother to have as his own until he should be twenty-one 




6o BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

years old. He was to work for his brother without any pay, 
except his board and clothing. As Benjamin was then about 
eleven years old, he would have to serve his brother for ten years 
to learn his trade. Benjamin liked this trade very much. He 
got to see many new books and could always borrow all he 
wanted, and used to sit up sometimes all night to read a book 
so he could return it unsoiled, to the store in the morning. 

The boy took a great fancy to poetry and at odd moments 
wrote some verses himself When he had quite a lot, he showed 
it to his brother James. Certainly it was, as Franklin after- 
wards called it "wretched stuff," but James printed it and 
sent Ben around Boston to peddle it. He was doing this 
with much pride when his father laughed at him and made fun 
of his poetry, and told him he would always be a beggar if he 
wrote verses for a living. He stopped short his writing and 
peddling poetry. But he was bound to write, for he loved to 
do it, and I will tell you how he played a nice trick off on his 
brother : 

James Franklin published a little Newspaper. It was Ben's 
duty after the paper was printed to carry loads of them around 
and deliver them to the subscribers. The boy read this paper, 
and he thought he could write as well as many whose articles 
were published in it. But he would not dare to ask his brother 
James to let him write, nor would he let anyone know what he 
wrote. His father would be sure to make fun, as he did of 
his poetry, if he saw it. So he wrote almost every week and 
slipped his pieces under the office door after it was closed. 
James printed them, and his father read them, but they did not 
dream that Ben wrote them. 

Now I will tell you of a way he saved money to buy books. 
Remember he got no wages for his work, but he always had 
money. A boy is not of much account if he does not have 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



6i 



L 




money. When you see a boy always going around without 
a cent, it is a pretty good sign he will never save anything. 
Franklin had got the notion that it was wrong to eat meat. 
Now his brother paid his board, you know. So the boy told 
his brother that if 
he would give him 
half what his board 
cost he would 
board himself As 
that would save 
James something, 
he agreed. Ben- 
jamin quit eating 
meat and lived on 
bread and other 
cheap foods. Thus 
he saved money to 
buy books, and by 
eating only a bit of 
bread and a tart for 
dinner he had half 
an hour every day 
to devote to read- 
ing, while the others 
were eating heavy 
dinners ; and this 
is the way he educated himself Would you think it strange 
if I told you that Benjamin did not like his brother James ? It 
is a fact, he did not. They often quarreled, for James did not 
treat his little brother right and sometimes gave him beatings. 
I will tell you how he got free from him. 

One day James printed something in hia paper which made 



EARLY DAYS IN THE COLONIES. 



fo BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

the Governor of the Colony mad. They arrested him and put 
him in jail for a whole month. Benjamin published the paper 
while his brother was in prison, and he said some very ugly 
things about the government, but was careful not to say any- 
thing for which they could get him in prison. This pleased 
James very much. But when they let him out of prison they 
forbade his publishing the paper any longer. Now what was 
James to do? He was a shrewd business man, so he said to 
Benjamin that he would set him free and run the paper in his 
name. So they destroyed the papers that bound the boy in 
law. Ben, however, said he would remain with his brother 
until he was twenty-one years old. This agreement was made 
and so it started, but soon James tried to impose on Ben as 
he had done before ; but as Ben was no longer bound to him, 
he left him. Ben afterwards said that he did not do fairly in 
this, and he was sorry for it, though it was, perhaps, nothing 
more than James deserved. 

Benjamin now tried to hire himself to other printers ; but 
none of them would take him because he had broken his con- 
tract with his brother. Besides, they had all agreed together 
that when one of their apprentices left, none of the others 
should hire him. 

What was he to do ? He was only seventeen years old, but 
he was not to be discouraged. Gathering a few of his books, 
he went aboard a sloop setting sail for New York. In that 
city he tried for days, but could get no work. Some one told 
him to try Philadelphia. It was a tedious and dangerous 
journey as it must be made by water. There were no rail- 
roads then. He took a sail-boat to Amboy, New Jersey. A 
storm came up and the boat was driven ashore, and the poor 
frightened boy lay all night in the little hold of the boat with 
the waves dashing over it, and the water, leaking through, 



BENJAlVnN FRANKLIN 



63 



soaked him to the skin. It took him thirty-two hours to get 
to Amboy, and all that time he had neither a drink of water 
nor a bite to eat. 

Having very little money he set out on foot and walked to 
Burlington. Here he was met by trouble he had not looked 
for. His ragged clothes, wet and soiled, made him look like 
what w^e now call a tramp ; but there were no tramps in those 
days. They thought he was a runaway and came very near 
putting him in jail, and he says he was then sorry he had not 
remained in Boston with his brother James. 

But it was now too late to go back, so he found a man with 
a row-boat at Burlington who was going to Philadelphia, and 




with him and 
to pay his pas- 
Philadelphia in 




A FASHIONABLE CHAISE IN WHICH PEOPLE RODE IN 
THE DAYS OF FRANKLIN. 



Franklin agreed to go 
help him row the boat 
sage. They arrived at 
the night, but as there 
were then no street 
lamps in the city, they 
passed by without 
knowing it. At length 
they went ashore and 
made a fire to dry them- 
selves, and waited until morning and rowed to the city. 

Poor Benjamin Franklin, all soiled, tired and very hungr}^ 
started up the street to find something to eat. He had no 
trunk or valise for his extra clothing, so he stuffed his extra 
stockings and shirt in his pockets. He soon found a baker 
shop and asked for biscuits as he used to buy in Boston. The 
baker did not know what they were. They did not make bis- 
cuits in Philadelphia. So Franklin asked him to give him 
threepenny worth of bread of any kind, as he was very hun- 
gry. The baker gave him three loaves, and putting one under 



64 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

each arm, he chewed vigorously on the other as he walked 
along. Don't you suppose he looked very odd and funny 
walking along the streets in his soiled clothes with his pockets 
stuffed with socks and a shirt, a loaf of bread under each arm 
and eating another? 

Well, so he did. And as he passed along a pretty girl 
named Deborah Read, looked out of the door, and he saw her 
laughing " fit to kill," and making all manner of fun of him. 
His pride was stung, but he was too hungry and helpless to 
do anything then. Many years afterwards, he married this very 
girl, and she was very fortunate and proud to get him. 

Franklin soon found a place to work with a printer named 
Keimer, and he very quickly showed that he was quite differ- 
ent from other workmen and boys about the place. He knew 
all about printing, so he was a valuable workman, and he had 
read and knew so much in books that those who knew him 
liked to hear him talk, and they used to refer to him to settle 
disputes on all sorts of questions. Instead of spending his 
evenings at the tavern drinking or gossiping, as other young 
men did, he went to his room and read good books or went in 
the company of those of whom he could learn something. 
Such young men as these always attract the attention of others. 

One day Mr. Keimer, the printer, looked out and saw two 
finely dressed gentlemen coming to his place. He went out 
to meet them and found it was no other than Sir William Keith, 
the Governor of Pennsylvania, and one of his friends. They 
had on silver knee-buckles and powdered wigs and ruffled 
shirts and gay-colored coats and silk stockings. Such fine 
people had never visited his shop before, and Keimer was much 
pleased, thinking what an honor it was to him, and, perhaps, 
he thought they might give him a big bill of printing to do. 
How great must have been his disappointment when the 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 65 

Governor asked to see a young man by the name of Benjamin 
Franklin. 

Franklin came out with his sleeves rolled up and wearing 
leather breeches — such as nearly all workmen wore in those 
days. He was quite surprised that the Governor should visit 
him, but was not ashamed to be an honest workman, and with- 
out ceremony he walked away between the two fine gentlemen 
to the tavern. Now what do you suppose the fine Governor 
wanted with this common young printer in his leather breeches? 
He told him that he wanted him to start a printing office of 
his own, as none of the other men of the city were first-class 
workmen. Franklin was veiy proud of the Governor's good 
opinion, but told him that he could not 
think of starting for himself as he was too 
poor to buy a press and types of his own 
and he did not think his father would 
help him. The Governor wrote a letter 
to Franklin's father urging him to help 
his son, and sent Franklin to Boston, 
dressed up nicely, wearing a watch, and 
with money in his pocket, to carry the old-time printing PRE^i. 
letter. His parents were delighted to see him looking so large 
and strong and so much improved in every way. But when 
he showed the Governor's letter, asking his father's aid in bu)- 
ing a press, he was told by the old gentleman that he v.^as too 
young to go into business for himself 

Franklin returned to Philadelphia with a heavy heart and 
reported to the Governor what had happened. The Governor 
seemed very much disappointed, and told Franklin that, if he 
would go to England to buy the presses and types, he would 
start him in business for himself. Benjamin agreed to do this, 
and at the appointed time called on the Governor to get the 




<6 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

letters of introduction and credit which the Governor said he 
would give him so he could buy whatever he wanted. They 
were not ready, but the Governor told him he would send them 
to the ship with other mail and he would get them before land- 
ing in England. 

So Franklin went aboard the vessel and for many days had 
a delightful sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Just before they 
came to land, the mail-bags were opened, but what was his 
amazement to find that there was no letter from the Governor 
for him. They searched carefully all through the letters sent 
by the Governor to make sure, but there was not a word for 
or about Franklin or the printing press and types he was to buy. 

Here he was, a poor young man with no money and no 
friends, several thousand miles from home. It would take 
about six weeks to write to the Governor and hear from him. 
Rethought it over and wondered if the Governor had forgotten 
it or just treated him meanly. A man on the ship told him 
that the Governor did many strange things, that he had no 
credit abroad, and could not have bought a printing press for 
himself, and that was the reason he had sent no letter of credit. 
Then Franklin made one of his wise sayings, " Fine clothes 
do not make a fine gentleman," which we still often hear 
repeated. 

But Franklin had learned to depend on himself and knew 
his printer s trade well, and he at once got a position to set 
type in London, where he learned many things that he did not 
know before. One was to engrave pictures and handsome let- 
ters on metal. Another was to make printer's ink, and yet 
another how to cast type or letters. This was all very useful 
to him in after years. 

We have told you that Franklin would- eat no meat. He 
also refused to drink wine or any intoxicating drink. Now, 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 67 

all of the English printers and laborers drank a great deal of 
beer, and when lunch-time came, and Franklin sat down with 
his cup of milk or water, they laughed at him, and told him 
that water would make him weak, and he would be of no 
account if he did not drink beer or whisb^ or something, and 
eat meat to make him strong. 

Franklin told them that was a mistake, and, to prove it, 
he lifted heavy weights and showed himself stronger than 
any man in the shop. One holiday in the summer they went 
out for a swim in the River Thames, and Franklin could swim 
farther and faster than any of them. They also thought as he 
had come from the " wild new world," he did not know much, 
but after they had talked to him a bit they found out he had 
read more books than any of them, and instead of going out 
at nights he spent his time reading. There was ?. man near 
by who kept a second-hand book store, and Franklin used to 
pay him so much a week to let him take out books and read 
them. 

By and by he found he had saved enough money to return 
to America, so he came back and got a position as a clerk in 
a store, but his employer died and he went back to work at the 
printer s trade. He hired himself to his old master, Keimer, 
and proved himself very useful in engraving plates to print a 
new paper money which was then being used in the Colony. 

After a while Franklin bought a press and started a printing 
house of his own. He had to go greatly in debt for it, but 
by very hard work he believed he could pay the debt. He 
used to get up in the mornings when other men were asleep 
and go to work, and he was in his office at night after others 
were in bed. If he had not been a very strong and robust man, 
this would have made him sick. Perhaps he stood it better 
because he lived on nothing but milk and bread and drank no 



68 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

intoxicating drinks. He did everything about his printing 
office. He made a wise saying : " If you want a thing done 
well, do it yourself." So when he wanted paper, he took a 
wheelbarrow and went over to the paper house, bought what 
he wanted, and wheeled it home himself 

He soon started a little newspaper, and he had read so much 
that he was able to write for himself, almost everything he 
printed in it. He also set a large portion of the type ; and 
for a long time worked his printing press with his own hands, 
for there were no steam presses in those days. People saw 
how industrious he was, and, as he was the best printer in 
Philadelphia, he soon had more work than he could do, work- 
ing early and late. 

Now, I will tell you an interesting thing that happened. 
You remember I told you about the girl who laughed at him, 
when he, with his pockets stuffed full of socks and a shirt, 
walked up the streets several years before, eating a loaf of bread 
and carrying two others under his arms. Well, when Frank- 
lin was away in England, this pretty young lady, whom he 
always liked very much, got married, and when he came home 
he was sorry to hear it, for he had always hoped that he might 
become able to take a wife himself, and, if he should, she was 
the one he meant to ask to marry him. Some time after 
Franklin came home, the husband of his old-time sweetheart 
died. 

Franklin waited until she took off her mourning, and he had 
gotten himself well started in his own shop, then he went over 
and told her what he had always intended to do, and said if 
she was willing to marry him now, he believed he could make 
a good living for the two in his own business, but, of course, 
they would have to live poor at first. He also told her that 
he was thinking of starting a litde book store in front of his 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 69 

printing office, and if she would marry him, she could be his 
clerk in the book store. 

She readily consented, for she had always liked Franklin. 
So they were married and the young couple set to work to 
pay off the debts for the printing office. They had no servant 
and they lived on very plain food. Franklin still ate for his 
breakfast only plain bread and milk out of a plain earthen dish, 
with a pewter spoon. His wife attended the store, sold books 
and stationery, and, long before they expected to be so, they 
were out of debt and beginning to grow rich. 

If you had gone into a house in those days you would 
have found very few books, but in every home you would have 
found something which people read very little now-a-days, 
namely, an almanac. It told the people about the weather, 
the days of the month and the weeks, put in a lot of recipes 
for cooking and all sorts of household remedies. In addition 
to this, it had wise sayings and choice bits of reading. So 
you see the almanac was a calendar, a cookbook, a doctor 
book and a reading book. Franklin concluded to print an 
almanac. He called it " Poor Richard's Almanac," and it is 
noted to-day for its wise sayings. Franklin signed the wise 
sayings, "Richard Saunders,'" and that is w^hy it is called 
"Poor Richard's Almanac;" but everybody knew Benjamin 
Franklin wrote it. 

By this time Franklin was one of the most learned men in 
the Colony, for, although he had never been to school since 
he was ten years old, he had, by studying at odd times, learned 
to speak and write several languages. One of the great needs 
of the people, he said, was an opportunity to read good books. 
There were very few books in the country and they were mostly 
in the libraries of rich people in their homes. So Franklin 
started a public library in Philadelphia. It was the first one 



70 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

started in this country, and he encouraged all the working peo- 
ple to spend their evenings and holidays at the library reading. 

About this time there was a great deal of talk about a strange 
influence called electricity, and wise men of Europe wrote much 
about it. Franklin read everything they wrote. Nobody knew 
what it was. Some of the wise men from the Old World came 
over to Philadelphia and lectured, and Franklin told them he 
believed that electricity was nothing more than the same power 
which caused the lightning and the thunder in the skies. They 
laughed at him, of course, so he determined to try and find out 
if it was not the same. How do you suppose he did it? I 
will tell you. 

Franklin noticed that the electricity in the batteries of 
machines which these men used, if applied to a hemp string, 
would make the short ends of the hemp stand up straight like 
the hair on a cat's tail when the cat is mad or excited. He 
also noticed, when he touched the battery, he felt a shock from 
the electricity. "Now," he said, "if the lightning from the 
clouds is electricity, it will also make the ends of the hemp 
string stand up, and if I could only get it to come to me, through 
apiece of metal, I would feel the shock as I did from the electric 
battery." 

The serious question was how he could get the hemp string 
up to the clouds. After a while he remembered that when he 
was a boy, he had often made a kite fly up as high as the 
clouds. So he took a silk handkerchief, made himself a kite 
and tied a long hemp string to it and put a steel point at the 
end of the kite, for he had found out that steel would attract 
electricity. On the other end of the hemp string, down close 
to his hand, he tied a metal key, and then from the key he 
tied a silk string which he held in his hand. They had found 
that electricity would not go through a silk string, and he 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



71 



reasoned that, if there was electricity in the clouds, it would 
be caught on the metal point of the kite and pass down the 
hemp string to the metal key, but would not pass down the 
silk string to his hand, as silk does not conduct electricity. 




WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY-ELECTRICITY AS APPLIED IN THE 20TH CENTURY. 

He was afraid if he should fly his kite in the daytime a great 
crowd would gather around him, and, if his experiment should 
not prove successful, they would laugh at him ; so one night 
when there was a w^ind and a thunderstorm, he went out all 
alone and sent his kite up. W^hen it was way up among the 



72 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

clouds, and the thunder was pealing and the lightning was 
flashing, he saw the hemp on his string stand up on ends. 
Then he reached his finger to the key and received a shock 
just as he felt it in an electric battery. He had proved that 
lightningis due to electricity, and he hadfound how to catch it 

The learned men of the Old World were astonished that a 
man who had never been to school since he was ten years of 
age had beaten them all so far in this mysterious and strange 
discovery. They said he was a philosopher, and called him 
" Doctor Franklin." Many people, however, only laughed at 
the story. Some of Franklin's friends said to him: ** Now 
that you have discovered it, of what use is it?" Franklin 
answered simply : *' Of what use is a child ? It may become 
a man." He meant to teach them that a discovery of any 
truth is a very important matter, and that all knowledge 
may be turned to good use. 

Franklin then set to work and invented the lightning rod, 
which is, as we have said, a steel point placed on a house 
to catch the lightning and run it down a metal rod into the 
ground, just as the steel point on Franklins' kite caught the 
electricity from the clouds and ran it down the hemp string. 

Franklin was now a great man, and the Americans were very 
proud of him. So they sent him on a journey to London in 
the interest of the people. Dr. Franklin was now reminded 
of a proverb of Solomon which his father used to repeat when 
he was a boy: *'Seest thou a man diligent in his business? 
He shall stand before kings." He was now going to stand 
before the •' Privy Council" of the King of England ; and what 
do you suppose he was going for ? I will tell you. 

When Pennsylvania was settled, William Penn was made 
the Governor, and a large amount of land was given him by 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



73 



the King for his father's faithful services 



When William Penn 
died, his sons inherited this large amount of land, and they 



claimed that they should 
on it and refused to do R 
thought they ought to g 
and so did Franklin, t 
to London to plead the ^ 
against the sons of Wil- R 
result was the King 
taxes like everybody 
came home more hon- 
He had stood before the 
a great cause for the 



not pay any taxes 
so. The people 
pay like others, 
hence he was sent 
cause of the people 
liam Penn. The 
made them pay 
else, and Frankhn 
ored than ever. 
King and gained 
people. Seven 

■ ^ 




INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA. 



years after this the English people undertook a very great 
injustice to the American Colonies. Always before this, when 



74 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

the King wanted money from the colonists, he had asked for 
it by his Privy Council and they had sent it freely. During 
the French and Indian War against England, the colonists 
had given so freely that the King said they had sent too much, 
and he made England pay back two hundred thousand dollars 
a year for several years. Now in 1 763 there was a man by 
the name of George Grenville made Prime Minister of Eng- 
land, and he was Lord of the Treasury. Without asking the 
King he decided to tax the Colonies in America, and to do it 
he had stamps made which he said should be put on all legal 
documents of whatever kind, and the people who used them 
would have to pay for these stamps. 

The people said they would give money when the King 
wanted it and asked for it, as they had always done ; but as 
they had no representative iii Parliament to plead for them, 
and as Parliament never had taxed them, they would not now 
submit to being taxed in this way. 

So the colonists from all over the country sent Dr. Franklin 
to England again, and he showed them how unjust it would 
be to make his country buy these stamps. He told them that 
the people of America would give money when the King asked 
for it. He showed them how liberal they had always been in 
giving more than was required. He told them the stamps on 
the papers would look like compulsion, and, while they could 
persuade the American people to do anything, they were too 
liberty-loving to be forced to do an unjust thing. 

But Mr. Grenville also persuaded Parliament to pass the law 
putting a special tax on tea and other articles as well as 
requiring stamps on legal papers. That meant the people of 
America had to pay England for the privilege of buying goods. 
This made the Americans very angry and they would not buy 
the goods. But a few people did buy them, and that made 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 75 

the true patriots very angry. So one day when a ship loaded 
with tea came into Boston harbor, with the hated tax imposed 
on it, some people went aboard and threw it into the sea. 

A few months later, the mean Mr. Grenville was removed 
from the office of Prime Minister and, through Dr. Franklin's 
influence. Parliament repealed the unjust taxes. Dr. Franklin 
was very popular in England. His learning and wisdom 
were so great that Oxford University gave him the degree 
LL. D., and other universities gave him degrees of honor. 

But, in spite of Dr. Franklin's efforts and popularity, other 
unjust laws were made and kept in force, and the quarrel 
already started grew worse and worse. The people saw Eng- 
land had no love for them, and was only holding them to help 
support the English king and rich people. This made them 
hate the mother country. Patrick Henry, the fiery orator, had 
made a great speech in Virginia, and urged the colonists to 
go to war rather than submit. This speech had been printed 
and gone all over the country, and fired the people against 
their oppressors. Meantime, England sent warships to Amer- 
ica to frighten the people into submission. So Dr. Franklin 
after ten years' hard work to keep peace left England in April, 
1775. ■ When he landed on May 6th, he found that the battle 
of Lexington had been fought, and the war w^as really begun. 

As soon as he reached Philadelphia, he again tried to do 
what he could to bring about peace, for he feared our small 
Bation of about three millions of people — not so many in all 
the country as there are now in the city of greater New York — 
would be almost destroyed if they tried to fight against the 
great kingdom of England with her many trained soldiers and 
great w^arships. 

But finding that England would not do right, he determined, 
w^ith Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and other 



76 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

great men, that it was better to die as a free man than to Hve 
in such slavery as England wanted to put upon us. He was 
elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, where the 
greatest men came from all the Colonies ; and he helped make, 
and signed the Declaration of Independence. 

He next went to work to get up soldiers — but he was a 
statesman instead of a soldier, and General Washington asked 
him to go to Canada and see if the Colonies there would not 
join us in our war, and make England set them free also. 
Franklin went and tried hard to induce them, but finally had 
to give it up and come home. He was made Postmaster 
General of the United Colonies ; that is, he had general charge 
of all the mail. 

When the war had been going on two years, everybody saw 
we must have help, or we should be beaten, our country would 
be ruined, and all our great men would be hung or shot as 
traitors to the English Government. France had been secretly 
helping us for some time, for they hated the English, but they 
would not come out boldly, for they were afraid of getting into 
a great war with England themselves. 

The colonists, knowing that Dr. Franklin could speak 
French, having learned it by studying at odd times while a 
young man, and also that he was the wisest and most popular 
man in the country, decided to send him to the Court of France 
to beg them to help us. 

Thus Franklin again stood before a king. He was now a 
venerable man, seventy years of age, but full of vigor and full 
of life and one of the shrewdest men who ever went abroad 
for his country. The people of Paris — the gayest city and the 
proudest Court in the world — were charmed with his wise say- 
ings, his simple ways and his quaint manners, for he pre- 
tended to be only a poor colonist, although he was famous all 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



77 



over Europe for his wise statesmanship, his learning in books, 
his discoveries and inventions. 

Franklin made himself very friendly, accommodating and 
pleasant; for while his heart was almost bleeding for his suffer- 
i n g country- 
men, and he 
wanted France 
to send aid 
quickly, he 
knew he must 
go about it in 
a very shrewd 
way and make 
them like him 
so much they 
could not re- 
fuse him. This 
teaches us a 
lesson. If we 
want people to 
help us, w e 
m u s t make 
them like us. 
Italso reminds 
us of another 
wise saying : 
" X'ineofar nev^- 

^-^ DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS MINISTER TO FRANCE. 

er catches 

flics." So Franklin went into their society. He talked with 
their learned men about science and philosophy and every- 
thing they wanted to discuss. One day he found a lot of 
scientific men talking very excitedly. He listened, and found 




78 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

out they were trying to answer by science, why it was that a 
dead fish if dropped into a bucketful of water would cause it 
to run over, but if a live fish of the same size were put into 
the bucket it would not run over. Many reasons were given 
by the learned French doctors, differing so much that they 
got into quite a war of words. Presently, some one said, 
" Mr. Franklin, we have not heard your explanation yet." 

With a smile Franklin asked them to bring in a bucket of 
water and two fish the same size. This was done. " Kill 
one of the fish," said Franklin. This was done, and Franklin 
put it in the water, and it ran over just as the wise men had 
said. "Now," said Franklin, "fill up the bucket level full 
again." This was done and he dropped in the live fish. It 
"scooted" around and more water ran over than the dead 
fish displaced. "There," said Franklin, " before wasting time 
in argument, be sure of your facts." This is another one of 
his wise sayings, and to this day it is a maxim in France, 
where Franklin is almost as popular as in his native land. 

Franklin soon won over the French people to the American 
side. They wanted to help us very much, as our people 
wanted to help the Cubans in their recent successful struggle 
for freedom from Spain's tyranny. But then the Government 
did not want to do anything for their fear of England. 

But after about a year of sleepless nights and thoughtful 
days, Franklin won the Government over too. It was a 
glorious day for him, when the treaty was made and sixteen 
big warships and four thousand French soldiers sailed out 
from France to help us fight. 

Besides this, Franklin could now buy more vessels, and as 
you read in the life of Paul Jones in this book, he fitted him 
out with ships after the loss of his own vessel. Do you not 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



79 



remember the fearful fight between the "Bonne Homme 
Richard " and the " Serapis ? " The " Bon Homme Richard " 
was Paul Jones' ship, and it was gotten for him in France 
with Franklin's aid. " Bonne Homme Richard " is French, 
and it means the good man Richard. It was so named in 
honor of Franklin's " Poor Richard's Almanac," which Jones 
read and found full of good advice. It is believed that this 
treaty with France and the aid the French people gave us are 
what saved our country from 
defeat. If so, is not Franklin 
almost, or quite, as great as 
George Washington ? 

Dr. Franklin remained in 
France during the whole of 
the war and kept her send- 
ing us help, and when Gen- 
eral Cornwallis surrendered 
to General Washington, he 
helped to make the treaty of 
peace with England, signing 
them both — for there was first 
a treaty and afterwards a final 
one — in Paris. He then made 
a treaty with Prussia which was of great benefit to our country. 

After all these great deeds and many smaller ones, which 
it would fill a book to tell, he prepared to leave France, where 
he had been for more than ten years. He was over eighty 
years of age and beginning to suffer with gout. So the Queen 
of France had him carried to the sea in her private easy chair, 
hung with silk curtains and lined with fine cushions and borne 
by two mules, one walking in front and the other behind. 
When Doctor Franklin reached home, everybody, from the 




FRANKLIN'S GRAVE. 
Corner Fifth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia. 



8o BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

highest to the lowest, joined in his praises and all those near 
enough went to see him. He was, next to Washington, the 
most honored man in the country. But v.^ould you not think 
they would let the dear old man rest the balance of his life? 
Certainly, if he so desired, but they thought he ought to be 
the President of Pennsylvania for them, anyhow for a while, 
and he served them in that office three years. 

Then all the free Colonies sent their great men together to 
name the new country and make a Constitution for it. Franklin 
was among them, and he told them that God had given the 
victory, and they must open the meeting every day with 
prayer, "because," he said, " if a sparrow cannot fall to the 
ground without His notice, an empire cannot rise up without 
His aid." So they did as he advised. The new country was 
named the United States of Ainerica, and its Constitution, 
declaring all men to be born free and equal, was made and 
adopted. George Washington was made President in 1789, 
and Franklin said it was the proudest day of his life when he 
saw him in office and this great country free, united, and under 
its own ruler. He had now but a short time to live, and 
though eighty-three years of age, he said he thought he ought 
to advise our people to free the negro slaves. Our Constitu- 
tion said all men were born free and equal, and if that were 
true we should not keep our fellow-man in slavery. So he 
became president of a society which undertook to persuade 
Congress to free the negroes, and signed a long letter called 
a memorial, begging Congress to buy the slaves from their 
owners, and set all the black people free. 

On the seventeenth day of April, 1 790, Benjamin Franklin 
died in Philadelphia, at the ripe old age of eighty-four years 
and three months. All the nation went into mourning for 
the good and great man. 



Patrick Henry, 

The Poor Boy Who Became a Lawyer and the Famous 
Orator of the Revolution. 




E 



I VERY boy and girl loves to 
hear a great speaker, and 
almost everyone has heard 
of the wonderful orator who stirred 
up the people and made them re- 
sist the tyrant King of England, 
who made our forefathers pay unjust 
taxes and kept them from being a 
free and independent people. 

His name was Patrick Henry 
Like almost all other great men, he 
has an interesting life. He made 
himself what he was. After failing 
in several other undertakings, he finally entered the calling 
to which he was exactly suited and became famous. 

His life will teach my girl and boy readers not to despair 
if they fail once or twice, but to keep on trying. There 
is some line of work or some profession in which every 
boy and girl can succeed, if they will only do as Patrick 
Henry did, find out just what they can do best; and, once 
they have undertaken it, stick to it and work with all their 
might. Like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and 

81 



89 PATRICK HENRY 

many of the great men in the early history of our country, 
Patrick Henry was born and raised in Virginia. His father 
was named John Henry, and came to this country, when a 
boy, from Scotland, about the year 1730, to seek his fortune 
in the New World. He got acquainted with the Governor's 
family, and the Governor introduced him to a Colonel Syme, 
who commanded the soldiers in Virginia. John Henry 
became a great friend of Colonel Syme and his wife. Mr. Henry 
also had a good education, and he was very useful to the 
Governor in the Colony. After a while he wrote back to his 
brother Patrick, in Scotland, who was a minister of the Church 
of England, and invited him to come to this country. Soon 
the Rev. Patrick Henry arrived. He was a smart man and 
quite an orator, and was made the preacher of St. Paul's Parish 
in Hanover, Virginia. It was for this good man that Patrick 
Henry, our great orator, was afterwards named. 

Colonel Syme, who commanded the Virginia soldiers, died, 
and his good friend, John Henry, was made Colonel in his 
stead. After a little while he married Mrs. Syme, the widow 
of his former friend, and they had two sons ; the older one 
they named William, after the brother of Mrs. Henry, and the 
younger boy was named Patrick, after his father's brother, 
whom we have just told you about. 

The two boys, William and Patrick, grew up together, and 
until Patrick was ten years old, he and his brother William 
went to school in the neighborhood, where they learned to 
read and write and studied arithmetic. About this time their 
father opened a grammar school in his own house, and the 
boys attended this school, where they studied Latin and also 
a little Greek. Patrick was, however, more fond of arithmetic 
and algebra and geometry. In fact, he disliked to study any- 
thing else, and if we must tell you the plain truth — he was 



PATRICK HENRY 83 

very lazy about studying anything, and got out of all the 
lessons he could without telling stories or being dishonorable. 
Like George Washington, he always told the truth, and is 
said never to have done a dishonorable thing in his life. 

But when it came to play, Patrick was different. He loved 
to play ball, to go swimming and to go hunting. So fond 
was he of the woods that sometimes when the school hour 
arrived Patrick was far away in the forest with his gun and 
his dog, or along the banks of the brook with his angle rod, 
though it is said he seldom brought home any fish. When 
school was out, as soon as he got his breakfast in the morn- 
ing, he was away to the woods, where he would spend whole 
days together, for weeks at a time, seeming to grow more 
fond of the deep and lonely stillness of the vast forest, which 
covered almost the entire country at that time. He preferred 
rather to go alone than with the other boys and join in the 
jolly fox-chase or rabbit hunt, as boys do now and as boys 
did then. It is true that he often started off with them, but 
after a little while they would find out that Patrick was not 
among them. Sometimes they would follow him, and they 
would nearly always find him lying alone by some rippling 
brook, where he seemed to be delighted with the music of the 
waters, or he would be flat on his back looking up into the 
blue sky. They naturally thought that he was too lazy to 
run about with them, but often when they slipped up on him, 
they would hear words in measured tones of oratory coming 
from his lips. He always seemed much ashamed when they 
caught him "talking to himself," as they called it, and he was 
too modest to tell them what he really was doing. It was 
found out in later life that he was thinking of the beauties of 
nature, studying about the strange things in the woods and 
the streams and the sky, and making to himself pretty speeches 



84 PATRICK HENRY 

about them or about people. Thus wc see, in early life, how 
his mind was inclined, and how he was naturally training 
himself. There were at that time a great many deer in Vir- 
ginia, and it was sport to hunt them with dogs. One part of 
the men and boys who went out to hunt would go on what 
they called the ''drive;" that is, they would take the dogs 
and go into a part of the forest and march straight through. 
If the dogs "jumped" a deer, it would run off in the other 
direction. The hunters followed, the dogs barking and the 
men hallooing with all their might, and the poor frightened 
deer would speed away in the other direction, as fast as its 
nimble legs would carry it. The other part of the men were 
called the "standers." They would go a mile or two ahead 
of where they expected to start the deer, and stand in the 
little forest paths along which the animals passed to and fro 
in the forest. When the frightened deer came bounding 
along the pathway, the " standers " would shoot it down. 

When the deer was killed, the lucky hunter would blow his 
horn with all his might, and all the hunters would come 
together, and they would have a great jubilee. They had a 
fashion, when a young man first killed a deer, to take the 
blood of the animal and literally smear him all over with it, 
and it is said that Patrick, although he was a constant hunter, 
was a good deal larger and older boy when he got his first 
smearing than a majority of his companions in the neighbor- 
hood. Patrick Henry was very fond of deer hunting, but he 
never went on the " drive." He always took one of the 
"stands," and was not at all choice about which stand they 
gave him, for it seems he would much rather remain alone 
with his thoughts than to be the heroic hunter who should 
bring down the deer. In fact, he frequently failed to answer 
the call of the lucky hunter who bagged the game, and was 



PATRICK HENRY 



85 



absent at the jollification around the slain animal. This was a 
breach of politeness on the part 
of the hunter which his com- 
panions were very slow to for- 
give. We must not conclude, 
however, that Patrick did not 
like societ^^ On the contrary, 




It. 



he was very fond of it, but his 
enjoyments were of a peculiar 
cast. He did not mix in thewild 
and mirthful scenes, but usually 
sat quiet, taking little part in the 
conversation, seldom, it is said, 
ever smiling or telling a joke. 
He seemed lost most of the time 
in his thoughts. For this reason, 
people used to think he did not 
know what was going on ; but 
they found out their mistake 
when they asked him about it, 
for he was able to repeat every 
word of the conversation better 
than any of the others could do 
Patrick was very fond of music and he learned to play on 



PATRICK HENRY SHOOTING A DEER. 



86 PATRICK HENRY 

the flute and violin, and often, at the country parties, he played 
the fiddle for many a jolly "old Virginia reel," which was the 
most popular dance in those days. He frequently joined in 
the dance, and, while he appeared to enjoy it immensely, it 
was said that he was very awkward and danced all over rather 
than with his feet. It was funny to see his long lanky arms and 
his big shoulders flying and shrugging about, while his feet 
seemed so heavy that he could scarcely get them off the floor. 

Patrick's school-days ended when he was fifteen years of 
age. By that time there w^ere so many brothers and sisters 
in the family that the father was scarcely able to support 
them ; so he had to let the two older boys leave school. Pat- 
rick was placed behind the counter of a country store, where 
he stayed for one year as a clerk. His father then thought 
Patrick and William ought to be able to run a store for them- 
selves, so he bought them a stock of goods, and in a country 
store "set them up in trade," as it was then called. 

Patrick was the manager of the store, because he had a 
year's experience, and William, though older, must be his 
clerk, at least until he could learn all the mysteries of store- 
keeping from his younger brother. But the boys thought that 
keeping store wasn't work, but only play, and all they needed 
to do was merely to wait on the customers, and give them 
what they called for. Furthermore, they thought everybody 
was perfectly honest, and so they were generally, but often 
people who do not have the money buy more things than 
they can pay for. So Patrick and William trusted everybody 
and about one-half of the time forgot to charge the things 
they sold on credit, and, at the end of the year when their 
father came to see how much money they had made, lo ! he 
was surprised to behold that they had sold almost everything 
in their store, and that they had very little money, and what 



PATRICK HENRY 



87 



they had charged up to the neighbors, if all collected, would 
not leave one half so much as he had started the boys in 
business with at the beginning. 

Thus Patrick Henry and his 
brother had proved great f;ii lures 
as merchants, and 
hunt work with 
the farmers, or get 
clerks 




"OFTEN AT THE COUNTRY PARTIES HE PLAYED THE FIDDLE FOR MANY A JOLLY 
' OLD VIRGINIA REEL." " 

other stores where they would have nothing to do with the 
management. But while the money had been wasted, Patrick's 



88 PATRICK HENRY 

time had not been wasted. His store was one of the most 
popular places in the neighborhood. People used to go there 
to talk and gossip with the " Henry boys," as they called 
them. No other place was so entertaining, or such a jolly 
good place to go. Every Saturday afternoon and almost 
every night found quite a throng of men and boys seated 
before the store-door in the summer time, or on goods boxes 
around the store in the winter, in animated conversation. 

No matter where else they might go, they never talked like 
they did in the " Henry boys' " store ; the reason of it was 
this : Patrick Henry, while he did little talking himself, every 
time he could get a crowd together began to ask somebody 
questions about some matter of history or something of com- 
mon interest. He would carry his questions from one to 
another, around the company, until he would get them into 
a lively debate, which often ended in quarrels and sometimes 
in a fist-light, for they were great fighters in those days. 

But no matter what they were doing, whether engaged in 
heated discussions or pommeling each other, with their fists, 
Patrick was watching them and studying human nature. You 
remember that he formerly studied the woods, the birds, the 
brooks and the things he found in the forest. He was now 
studying men, and how they might be moved to good or bad 
deeds by speech. Perhaps he had no thought of ever becom- 
ing a great orator. He studied humian nature because he 
loved to be doing it, and he thus gained a knowledge of men 
which afterwards enabled him to control them so powerfully 
with his wonderful eloquence. 

During this period at the store, Patrick also began to read 
books of history. He particularly loved to study the lives of 
the grand old Greek and Roman heroes. He read all the 
orations of that wonderful orator, Demosthenes, who lived in 



PATRICK HENRY 89 

the city of Athens more than three hundred years before 
Christ, and who used to make such fiery orations against King 
Philip of Macedonia, who was oppressing his countrymen, so 
that the people of Athens would rise up and shout in their 
frenzy, " Let us march against Philip.'' He read also the 
beautiful speeches of Cicero, the silver-tongued orator of the 
Romans, whose voice was so melodious, words so well chosen 
and sentences so beautifully put together that it was like 
listening to sweet enchanted music to hear him speak. 

Frequently, when customers came into the store, they heard 
Patrick in the back room, repeating some of these master 
orations, and they used to pause in the doorway before asking 
for the goods they wanted, and listen for a few moments to 
the beautiful expression he gave them. Thus it will be seen 
how he prepared himself to speak as forcibly as Demosthenes, 
yet as musically and beautifully as Cicero. Let not any of 
my young readers think this time was wasted. Not so ; it 
was very profitably spent. It is not what we learn in school 
so much as the private training we give ourselves which 
makes us great in any cause. 

We have spoken above of Patrick Henry's playing the 
violin and flute at country parties. Like all true-hearted and 
manly boys, he liked the girls, and was fonder of being with 
them than in the society of the men, for he was always pure- 
minded and never given to telling vulgar stories, nor did he 
enjoy listening to them from others. At one of the parties 
he attended, when he was about seventeen years of age, he 
met and fell in love with a farmer's daughter, and when he 
was only eighteen years old did a very foolish thing which 
we would not advise any of our young readers to imitate. 
What did he do, did you ask ? Why, at this early age he got 
married, without any money himself, and his wife's father was 



90 PATRICK HENRY 

SO poor he could not help her. What do you think of an 
eighteen-year-old boy with, a wife? 

But before we blame Patrick Henry too much, we must 
remember that in those days people got married earlier than 
they do now. In the South many of the young men marry 
at the age of eighteen or nineteen years, and the girls from 
fifteen to seventeen. If we go into some of the far south 
countries, like Mexico, we find them marrying even younger. 
So while Patrick Henry was, as we think, a very young 
groom, he was not in that day entirely out of fashion. 

One day soon after the wedding, Mr. John Henry and Mr. 
Shelton — that was the name of Patrick's wife's father — met, 
and, between them, gave the young people enough land to 
make them a small farm. They built them a little house, and 
the young husband went to work with a will digging in the 
earth to support himself and his new wife. Their little 
cottage consisted of two rooms ; one in which they cooked 
and ate, and the other was their sleeping-room, their sitting- 
room, their parlor and their spare-room, so that when any ot 
their friends came to see them and stayed all night, as they 
frequently did, Patrick and his wife gave up the bed to the 
visitors and made for themselves a pallet in a corner. This, 
you must remember, was not as poor a home as Abraham 
Lincoln had when he w^as a boy ; but a poorer one than he 
had when he started his married life. 

Many a day you might have seen Patrick, then a young 
husband not yet nineteen years of age, plowing among the 
stumps in his "new ground," as he called it, cleared up in 
front of his cabin, with his happy girl-wife busy inside the 
house, or feeding the chickens about the door. It was too 
bad that the first year the crop on Patrick's farm was a failure. 
He did not make enough to keep them alive and in the poorest 



PATRICK HENRY 



91 



kind of clothes. He proved himself to be as poor a farmer 
as he had been a merchant, for at the end of the year he came 
out in debt. He and his wife talked the matter over, and it 




was decided that 
they should get 
out of debt by 
selling their little 
farm and all they 
had, and he 
should take the 
remainder of the money and go again into business as a 
merchant. He no doubt flattered himself that he would be 
able to profit by his past experience and make a success. 
The farm was sold, and the store was opened. 



MANY A DAY YOU MIGHT HAVE SEEN PATRICK PLOWING 
AMONG THE STUMPS IN HIS 'NEW GROUND.*" 



93 PATRICK HENRY 

His old friends came again. He had no trouble to get 
customers, but he was too good-hearted to press anybody for 
money ; and he occupied so much time in playing his violin 
and flute for the pleasure of those who came to his store to 
buy, and got up so many debates, and his customers had such 
a good time generally, that at the end of two years he was 
worse off than before and had to give up his store. Thus, 
before he was more than twenty-three years of age, he had 
failed twice as a merchant, once as a farmer, and altogether in 
everything else he had attempted to do except to make people 
like him and to learn more about human nature and the way 
to control and influence men. In this he was wiser than any- 
one else about him. 

The little store being given up, he did such various jobs of 
work as he could get and thus earned a poor support for his 
family. He had by this time also become a great reader. 
During his idle hours he studied geography and history, 
learned all about the different countries, their rulers and their 
manners and customs. He was said by everybody to be the 
best-read man in the community. 

Often he had to go hungry or eat the very poorest and 
coarsest of food, but he was always cheerful and never 
despondent. *' No use of crossing the bridge before we get to 
it," he used to say to his wife. " There's a good time coming 
by and by" was another of his favorite expressions, though 
there was little prospect at this time for any good times for 
Patrick Henry or his family. But it did come, as we shall 
see, and one of the best lessons which young people can 
learn from his life is that of cheerfulness and hopefulness. 
He was, also, truthful and rigidly honest, as we have said 
before. He was, also, a man of very firm character. He 
could not be led into anything he thought was wrong, and he 



PATRICK HENRY 93 

was a believer in God and a true Christian. Thus he was 
able to be cheerful and hopeful under troubles which would 
cause many men to despair. 

Up to this time he had never thought of becoming a lawyer, 
nor had any of his friends suggested it to him. He had not 
made a public speech, not even in a debating society, but he 
had read the history of the nations of the world ; he had 
studied oratory for his own pleasure, and it suddenly dawned 
upon him that he might make a lawyer. 

When Patrick Henry was twenty-four years old, he set to 
work to read law. For six weeks or two months he shut 
himself up with a few law books and then he went before the 
board of examiners and asked them to see if he did not know 
enough to practice law. He told them how much he had 
read, and they laughed at him ; but in talking with him they 
found out that he knew so much about history and other 
things that a lawyer needed to know, that two of them gave 
him their consent to practice. 

The other one of the examiners, Mr. Randolph, who was 
not present when the other two gave him their consent, was 
so shocked at Mr. Henry's personal appearance and poor 
clothes, when he came to see him, that he told him he was 
not fit to be a lawyer — that no man who looked like him 
could be a lawyer, and he would not examine him at all. 
This made Patrick angry, and he answered the learned man 
in such a manner and gave him such a lecture on his duty 
that Mr. Randolph was greatly surprised, and he tried to 
punish Mr. Henry for it by getting him into an argument in 
which he meant to show him how ignorant and unfit he was; 
but here Patrick Henry was at home, and he talked so smart 
and so well that the judge exclaimed : " Mr. Henry, I will 
never trust to appearances again. If your industry be only 



94 PATRICK HENRY 

half equal to your genius, you will become an honor to your 
profession ; " and he signed Patrick Henry's license, though 
it is said young Henry was at this time so ignorant of the 
forms of practice that he could not make out a case or present 
it before the court. 

Like most young lawyers, he had to wait a good while 
before he had anything to do, and when It came it was rather 
by accident ; but it gave him an opportunity, and that oppor- 
tunity made him famous 

We will now tell you about his first law case and his first 
speech. There was at that time in Virginia an established 
church like they had in England. It was called the Episcopal 
Church, and the ministers were hired by the Governor. Vir- 
ginia was a great tobacco-raising country, and they had a law 
that the farmers might pay their debts in tobacco. The sheriff 
and the judges of the court were paid so much a year in 
tobacco for their services, and the ministers also received a 
certain number of pounds of tobacco each year. 

That seems very funny to us now ; but you know there was 
once a time, in certain parts of the South, when they even 
used cdon-skins for money. There are many cases where a 
man even paid for his license, when he wanted to get married, 
in coon-skins, and when the preacher " tied the knot," the 
young man, if he was generous and liberal, would always 
load the preacher up with coon-skins as pavment for his ser- 
vices. This was not generally so, but it Vvas often done in 
new countries where coons were plentiful and money was 
scarce. So in Virginia the farmer could pay his debts in 
tobacco at sixteen shillings a pound. But one year tobacco 
went up to fifty shillings a pound, therefore the farmers, who 
were in control, had a law made that they might pay their 
debts in money, if they wanted to, instead of tobacco. 



PATRICK HENRY 95 

This law was made to hold good for only ten months, and 
after that time they again paid in tobacco, the price of which 
had gone down as low or lower than it had been before. 
But a few years later there came another short crop in tobacco, 
and the price went up to fifty shillings again, so the farmers 
had another law made permitting them to pay in money, but 
they very cautiously made this new law so that it would not run 
out ; but the ministers seemed not to have noticed it was so 
made and after the first year wanted their pay in tobacco again, 
because it would bring them nearly double what they would 
get, if they were paid in money. 

This brought on quite a war between the people and the 
ministers, and they had a big suit in court. The farmers 
were very mad with the clergymen, and the clergymen were 
very mad with the farmers, each party accusing the other of 
wanting to cheat. The clergymen sent word to the King 
of England, and the King took their side, and said that the 
farmer's law should be '' null and void,'' which means that it 
should not be enforced, that the clergymen should be paid in 
tobacco. The King was very shrewd in this, and while it 
appeared that he only wanted to take the ministers' part, he 
was, in reality, planning to enrich himself; because, if the 
clergy could collect their dues from the people in tobacco, 
which was worth more than twice as much as the money they 
were entitled to, the King said he would also collect his taxes 
in tobacco. 

So you see how wise and yet how mean the King was in 
his decision. The people had the law on their side, and the 
clergymen wanted to collect twice what the people owed 
them, and the King said that they should do it. The clergy- 
men made a great noise that the people were swindling them 
out of their just rights. They wanted tobacco, they did not 



96 PATRICK HENRY 

want money. They argued that it was a shame and a disgrace 
to swindle the ministers in that way, and insisted that they 
were right, because the King himself said so. The people, 
on the other hand, said that the ministers and officers were 
employed for so much a year, and that they had no right to 
demand their tobacco, which they could sell for two or three 
times as many pounds of money as they had engaged to 
work for. 

This looks entirely reasonable, and the people were right ; 
but the clergymen and the officers and the King wanted the 
tobacco. You would think that it would have been better if 
the sheriff and the King and the judges had brought suit 
against the people to collect their claims in tobacco ; but you 
will see how cunning they were in having the ministers to do 
it instead of doing it themselves. All the people loved the 
ministers, and they would sympathize with their cause perhaps, 
when they would not sympathize with the officers. Therefore 
it was decided that the ministers should bring suit, and if 
they could make the people pay them in tobacco, then they 
would have to pay the officers and the King also in tobacco. 

A lawyer by the name of Lewis was to plead the cause of 
the people, and a Mr. Lyons was to plead the cause of the 
clergymen ; but when the King decided that the clergymen were 
right and the people were wrong, and that the law should not 
be obeyed, Mr. Lewis, the people's lawyer, told them they could 
not gain their cause against the King, and so he gave it up. 

There were very few lawyers then in the country; and they 
were nearly all in the employ of the King, so the people could 
find no one to plead their cause, and, as the last resort, they 
turned to Patrick Henry, a young lawyer of twenty-four years, 
who had never made a public speech in his life. The place 
where the case was to be tried was at Hanover Court-house, 



PATRICK HENRY 



97 



and the judge who was to sit on the bench was Patrick Henry's 
own father, and among those who opposed the people was 
his own uncle for whom he was named, the Rev. Patrick 
Henry. Was this not an embarrassing situation for the young 
lawyer who had never made a speech, to find himself in ? 




A TYPICAL VIRGINIA COURTHOUSE IN THE DAYS OF PATRICK HENRY. 

The day came. It was one of those beautiful Indian sum- 
mer days which comes in November in the South. Patrick 
Henry was early at the courthouse and great throngs of people 
gathered in from all directions. Never before in Hanover 
had there been so many farmers present on any court day. 
The decision of the case amounted to thousands of dollars of 
loss or gain to them. The clergymen came from all over the 
State, which was then, you know, only a Colony — though 



9S PATRICK HENRY 

much larger than it is now. There were twenty or more of 
the most learned clergymen of the nation present They had 
come to frown upon the young lawyer who was to plead 
against them and to scowl at the people, who, they pretended, 
were trying to rob them. 

Patrick Henry was nervous. It was his first case. He had 
never spoken in court, and he walked restlessly about among 
the farmers, speaking a word here and there to this or that 
one, with many of them pulling at his elbows, offering him 
advice. He could plainly see that they were afraid they had 
a very poor lawyer, and he felt, himself, that they had. Pres- 
ently, he saw his learned and eloquent uncle. Rev. Patrick 
Henry, drive up in his carriage, and, before any of the clergy- 
men could get to him, the young lawyer dashed up, grasped 
his uncle by the hand and pleaded with him to go away.. The 
young lawyer said : " Sir, I have never spoken in my life, and 
your presence here will add to my embarrassment. My own 
father must sit on the bench, and that will be bad enough. 
Besides, there will be twenty clergymen to criticise me. All 
of this I can stand; but I am sure I could not have my own 
uncle, whose name I bear, sitting among them frowning upon 
me. For my sake, I beg you to go away." 

The uncle replied in kindly but regretful tones : " Patrick, 
I am surprised to find you arrayed against the ministry ; you 
are doing yourself great injustice and ruining your future 
prospects for usefulness." 

''That may be," said Patrick, "but I see no moral reason 
v/hy I should not accept the case for the people, besides, in 
my own heart, I am firmly convinced that they are right, and, 
with all due respect, sir, that you and the clergy are wrong. 
For my sake and the respect that I bear you, will you not go 
away? I shall have to say some hard words against the 



PATRICK HENRY 



99 



clergy this day. ZTid I would not speak them in your ears." 
There was a : espectfulness in his tones that his uncle could 
but appreciate and an earnestness in his manner which he 
could not resist, so re-entering his carriage, he simply said : 
" For your sake, Patrick, I will be absent; though your cause 
is wrong, I have too much respect for your feelings to allow 
my presence to embarrass 
you." So saying, he drove pf 
away. 

The court was opened. 
The array before Patrick's 
eyes was almost fearful. 
The most learned men of 
the Colony, the severest 
critics in the New World 
were against him, and the 
courthouse was crowded. 
On the outside, the win- 
dows were thronged with 
anxious faces looking in. 

Mr. Lyons made a short 
speech,simply explaining to 
the jury the fact that the King had decreed his side to be right. 
He pleaded that the clergy were the greatest benefactors of 
the Colony, that it was a shame to mistreat them, and that 
this law, if enforced, simply robbed them of their just allow- 
ance. His closing was eloquent and beautiful, and the min- 
isters nodded their assent when he took his seat. He had 
presented their cause well 

Now came the first trial of Patrick Henry's strength. No 
one had ever heard him speak, and every one was curious. 
Even his opponents seemed to feel sorry for him. He rose 




AN OLD VIRGINIA MANSION, COMMON IN THE 
TIME OF PATRICK HENRY. 



loo PATRICK HENRY 

and stood for a moment in an awkward manner, and, when 
he began, faltered much in his speech. The people hung 
their heads, and the ministers exchanged sly, smiling looks of 
derision at each other. His father, it is said, almost sunk 
behind the desk, he was so mortified and confused ; but these 
circumstances lasted only for a few moments. 

Patrick Henry's soul rose within him, his whole appearance 
changed, the fire of his eloquence was kindled, and he seemed 
to forget himself ; his figure stood erect, his bearing was lofty, 
and his face shone with a grandeur that no one had ever seen 
upon it before. His awkward actions became graceful to 
behold ; his voice, no longer faltering, was charming and beau- 
tiful. Words seemed to crowd for utterance : there was light- 
ning in his eyes as he turned upon the clergymen that seemed 
to rive them like a thunderbolt. He literally made their blood 
run cold and their hair rise on ends. All eyes were now 
fastened upon him. Men looked at each other with surprise, 
and then, held by the spell in his eyes, the majesty of his atti- 
tude and the power of his words, they could look away uo 
more. The old father stood erect behind the desk, with tears 
of delight streaming down his cheeks. The jury seemed 
bewildered. 

No one can describe that speech, and it has never been 
printed. It was delivered under the impulse of the moment ; 
but it was declared by the clergymen themselves, against whom 
it was spoken, that no such speech, as they believed, had ever 
fallen from the lips of man, and, to this day, in Hanover, Vir- 
ginia, the highest compliment that can be paid to a speaker is 
to say : " He is almost equal to Patrick Henry when he plead 
against the parsons." The clergymen had sued for heavy 
damages, hut .the jury, without scarcely leaving their seats, 
granted them only one penny. Mr. Lyons made a motion 



PATRICK HENRY 



for a new trial ; that is, he tried to get his case tried over, but 
the court refused 
to give the par- 
sons a newhearing. 
Was ever such 
a \'ictory won by 
a n e w lawyer ? 
It was the first 
speech Patrick 
Henry ever made, 
and it was un- 
doubtedly one of 
the greatest 
speeches ever de- 
livered in the 
world before a 
court. At its close 
the people, who 
had hung their 
heads in shame at 
the beginning, 
rushed into the 
courthouse, seized 
the young lawyer 
in spite of the 
sheriff's cry for or- 
der, hoisted him 
on their shoul- 
ders, carried him 
out of the house 

and over the town, with a wild multitude 
screaming his praises at the top of their voices 




PATRICK HENRY MAKING HIS SPEECH BEFORE THE HOUSE 
OF BURGESSES. 



following 



and 



I02 PATRICK HENRY 

Patrick Henry had at last found the calKng for which he 
was intended, and to which he was suited. From this time 
forward he was the greatest lawyer, not only in Hanover 
Courthouse, but of all Virginia. He had all the cases he 
could attend to, and made plenty of money to support his 
family, who had for many years been struggling with poverty. 

He lived for nearly forty years after this memorable day at 
Hanover Courthouse. His life was full of honor and useful- 
ness to his country, and he has made several other speeches, 
parts of which every schoolboy has at one time or another 
used as a declamation. 

And now that we have told you of the hardships and trou- 
bles of Patrick Henry's early life, let us tell you of the great 
things he did in the service of his country. 

In January, 1765, the famous "Stamp Act" (which we 
explained in the life of Benjamin Franklin) was passed by the 
British Parliament The colonists were to be oppressed, and 
no one dared to openly rebel against it. 

In May, Patrick Henry was elected to the House of Bur- 
gesses (that is what the Virginia Legislature was called in 
those days), and he pledged himself to his people to do all 
he could to oppose the enforcement of the Stamp Act. There 
were many learned and eloquent speakers in the House and 
he was not expected to take the lead. 

The fine gentlemen in the assembly, who lived in fine old 
Virginia mansions, and wore fine clothes, made fun of Pat- 
rick's country way of talking, his "homespun" clothes and 
his awkward manners ; but when he spoke they could not 
help admiring his wonderful command of language and his 
power over men. His first speech was against rich men who 
wanted to lend the Colony's money to themselves and their 
friends. This made them his great enemies, but the other 



PATRICK HENRY 103 

side — the common people — admired him more than ever. At 
last it came time to consider the hated "Stamp Act." None 
of the great men dared to speak against it openly. So Patrick 
Henry drew up some resolutions declaring that the English 
Parliament had no right to make this tax upon the people, 
and, furthermore, they had no right to make any laws against 
the interest of the Colonies. He said they were responsible 
to the King alone, and that the House of Burgesses and the 
Governor alone had the right to make the colonists pay taxes. 

After the reading of his resolutions, Patrick Henry was 
assailed by a storm of words and much ridicule by those who 
favored or were afraid of England. There were hot speeches 
from several gentlemen, and a less heroic spirit than Henry's 
would have said not a word more. No one thoueht the 
resolutions would pass. 

At length when the storm had subsided, Patrick Henry 
arose to speak. His face was deathly pale, his thin lips quiv- 
ered, but his eyes had a look of awful determination in them. 
Stretching his long arms at full length toward the President 
(called the Speaker) he began and delivered the greatest 
speech perhaps ever heard in America. The walls rang with 
the mighty force of his words, and everyone was overpowered 
with his wonderful eloquence, as they had been in the famous 
"Parson Case." They shouted "treason" at him, but he 
could not be frightened, but all the time grew bolder and 
more eloquent. When he closed this great speech every 
member but two voted for his resolutions. 

Patrick Henry had been the first one who dared oppose 
England. His wonderful speech was printed and sent all 
over the Colonies, north and south, and it was even sent to 
England ; and in a few months Parliament repealed (that is, 
removed) the hated " Stamp Act." 
7 



I04 PATRICK HENRY 

But the spirit of liberty was now awake in the people, and 
they demanded relief from other unjust laws which England 
tried to impose, and in this effort Patrick Henry was one of 
the foremost men in the country. He was greater than all 
other men in Virginia, and he, with Thomas Jefferson ajid 
Richard Henry Lee, kept telling the people they ought to be 
free. In 1 773 — eight years after his great speech — Mr. Henry, 
Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Lee and many others got the House of 
Burgesses to elect men to write to the other Colonies about 
their grievances against England. This was a great benefit, 
for the different Colonies were thus brought together in their 
efforts and protests against cruel laws. Through this Com- 
mittee of Correspondence, it was decided that the Colonies 
should hold a congress in Philadelphia in 1774. Every Col- 
ony sent representatives. Mr. Henry was one of those from 
Virginia. 

Patrick Henry opened the Congress with a great speech, in 
which he said, '' I am not a Virginian, but an American.^ 
Everybody soon saw he was the most powerful orator in 
Congress, and many said he was the greatest man in the 
nation, for he was as wise and just as he was eloquent. 

In March, 1775, Mr. Henry made another speech in the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, which is said to have been the 
grandest effort of his life up to this time. He wanted the 
Colony to raise soldiers and prepare for war. Almost every 
schoolboy knows part of this speech. 

Patrick Henry then went to work and got up a company 
and made the Governor, who was but the servant of the King, 
give up the colonists' gunpowder, which he had taken away 
to the English ships. This was the first resistance by arms, 
to England in Virginia. He also made the Governor pay for 
the damage he did the people. 



PATRICK HENRY 105 

Patrick Henry now went back to the Continental Congress, 
as they made him commander of all the Virginia soldiers ; but 
he was too good a statesman to spend his time in the war, 
and so his friends begged him to stay in the Virginia Legis- 
lature and Continental Congress, which he did. 

In May, 1776, he got the Virginia Legislature to pass a 
vote requesting the Continental Congress to declare our 
country free from England, and to go to war with her if she 
would not let us go. He then helped make a new Constitu- 
tion for Virginia, and they elected him Governor of the 
Colony. Thus, in sixteen years after he began to study law, 
he Avas one of the most famous men in America and Gov- 
ernor of Virginia. How do you suppose those proud people 
who laughed at him felt now? 

The Revolutionary War now began in earnest, and it would 
take a big book to tell how he and John Adams and others, 
by their wise counsel and eloquent speeches, inspired the 
soldiers and helped General Washington to win in the end. 
Through it all Patrick Henry was in his State Legislature, or 
the General Congress, or serving as Governor. After the war 
was over, they made him Governor twice, and tried again, in 
1786, to get him to serve them, but he declined, as he had 
already been Governor so much. He told them he did not 
think they ought to get in the habit of letting one man hold 
office too long. In this he was like George Washington 
You know Washington would not let them make him Presi- 
dent but twice. But the people loved Patrick Henry so much 
that they tried to make him Governor again ten years later, 
in 1796, but he told them no, he had been honored enough. 

President George Washington offered to make Mr. Henry 
his Secretary of State in 1795. This is the very highest 
office ill the nation, next to the President and Vice-President. 



io6 , PATRICK HENRY 

Patrick Henry said no, there were better men for it Mr. 
Washington then wanted to appoint him Chief Justice of the 
United States, and President John Adams asked him to be 
our special minister to France, where, you remember, Benja- 
min Frankhn was so long our representative, but he said no 
to both of these, because he preferred to remain a private cit- 
izen and live with his family — he now had many interesting 
children. 

Finally, in 1799, the Virginia Legislature passed a very 
bad law, which George Washington — who was now a private 
citizen again — thought was very dangerous and might cause 
trouble to the whole United States. So he begged Patrick 
Henry to offer himself as a candidate for the Legislature, for 
he knew, with his powerful eloquence, Mr. Henry could over- 
come the bad law. Mr. Henry was elected, of course, but 
before he took his seat he died, at Red Hill, Charlotte County, 
Virginia, June 6, 1799, when only sixty-three years and a 
few days old. 

Patrick Henry was regarded by everyone as the greatest of 
American orators. Thomas Jefferson and John Randolph 
declared he was the greatest orator who ever lived, and he was 
often compared to Demosthenes and Cicero as the only 
speakers of ancient times worthy to be ranked with him. 

Patrick Henry's wife, Sarah Shelton, died some years before 
her noted husband, and he afterward married the grand- 
daughter of Governor Spottswood, of Virginia. Mr. Henry 
throughout his life was a devoted Christian, and left a spotless 
name tor honesty and uprightness of character. 



s 





GREAT BATTLE SHIP "KEARSARGE" ■ 

;:r:::"""\--> 

THE TRUE STORY OF 

Robert 

Fulton, 



rhe Builder of the First Suc= 
cessful Steamboat. 



, FITCMS STEAMBOAT 

RAN BETWEEN PHILADELPHIA ANO BUR 



J^^es-- 






*I3P»^ 



^i- 



O any of my young read- 
ers think, when they go 
to take a boat-ride and 
are carried along, al- 
most as fast as a bird would fly 
over the waters, in the great fast- 
moving steamboats, that it is not 
yet one hundred years since the 
first successful steamboat was 
floated on the water? Would 
FOLLOWING FULTON'S DISCOVERY, you not like to kHow somcthmg 

107 



ilton ■• 
Ith^his sice 



DEVELOPMENT OF STEAM NAVIGATION 



io8 ROBERT FULTON 

about the man who made it ? I shall be very glad to tell you 
this story, for he was one of our own countrymen, and we 
feel proud of him as we do of Franklin, who invented the 
lightning rod, and Morse, who invented the telegraph, and 
Bell, who made the telephone, and Edison, who invented the 
phonograph, and many other famous Americans who have dis- 
covered and made such wonderful things for the benefit of the 
world. We like to tell the great deeds they have done for 
the benefit of mankind. 

I shall have to commence by telling you again of a very 
poor boy. His name was Robert Fulton. He was born in 
the State of Pennsylvania in 1765. His father was an Irish- 
man who had moved to the New World, and he was a tailor ; 
that is, he made clothes for other people. I shall have to tell 
you the truth and say that Robert was not fond of books when 
he was a boy, but he liked to be always making things. He 
could make lead pencils, and he could also make skyrockets 
for his and his friends' Fourth of July celebration. Every- 
thing that the boy looked at in the way of a machine, he won- 
dered if he could not make it better. 

He was given but very little education, first because he did 
not like to study books, and second because his parents were 
so poor that he had to go to work very young. They put him 
with a jeweler to learn the trade of watchmaking; but he 
soon began to use his extra time in drawing pictures and 
painting. He also learned to make portraits of people which 
looked very much like them (you know they could not take 
photographs in those days), and he sold portraits and pictures 
of landscapes to get money, which he carefully put away. 

This boy also loved various kinds of sports. He was par- 
ticularly fond of fishing, and he used to go out with the boys 
on an old fiatboat which they pushed along the river with a 



ROBERT FULTON 



109 



R.U5HING 

HOM.t. 



pole. This was very laborious work, so Robert showed them 
how to make two paddlewheels, one on each side of the boat, 
which they hung by cranks over the sides, and by turning the 
cranks, as a boy would turn a grindstone, the paddles went 
around in the water and pushed the boat along. This was 
great fun, and it set Robert thinking and wondering why such 
wheels might not be put on big boats, to push them when 
there was not wind enough for the sails. 

The one trouble about this was that such bie wheels would 

o 

be required they could not get men 
enough around the cranks to turn 
them in the water. Still Robert 
kept thinking about it, and after a 
while you will see how valuable 
this thought was to him. All this 
time Robert Fulton kept painting 
pictures and selling them. He 
wanted very much to be a great 
artist, like Benjamin West, who, he 
learned, had commenced in America ; 
but had now grown to be such a great 
artist that he was living in London, 
getting lots of money for his pictures. In the meantime, 
his father died, and Robert was left to support his widowed 
mother. By the time he was twenty-one years of age he had 
earned enough money to buy a little farm for his mother so 
she could keep cows, have a garden, and raise chickens, tur- 
key and other foul to sell. Then, with his mother's consent, 
he took the balance of his money and sailed away to Europe 
to study art. A large part of his time he spent with the famous 
artist, Benjamin West, in London, and became a good painter. 
But all this time his mind kept running on inventions, and he 




no ROBERT FULTON 

made a number of new machines. Among other things was 
a Httle boat which he could make run under water. He 
intended it to blow up war vessels, but somehow the people 
did not think it of any use. About this time he began to be 
interested in the steam engine, which was invented by James 
Watt, a young Scotchman, a good many years before. 

These engines had been used to work pumps and to do all 
sorts of things on the land, and one Englishman tried to make 
it run a boat. This Englishman's idea was to make the engine 
push a thing, like a duck's foot, through the water. Just like 
the inventor of the flying machine now tries to use something 
like a bird's wing to fly with, so this inventor thought he must 
use something like the duck's foot to swim the boat along 
with. The engine worked the foot all right, but it was not a 
success. 

Fulton began to study how he could make a steam engine 
run a boat. He heard of an American who tried to run a 
boat by forcing a stream of water through it, pumping it in the 
bow and pushing it out the stern with a steam engine. This 
was a pump-boat, and though it made the boat go, something 
about it was wrong, and it failed. Another man by the name 
of John Fitch had made a steamboat with paddles on the sides 
of it like ordinary oars. The engine was made to run the oars 
back and forth as the men did when they held them in their 
hands. This man was also an American and ran his boat on 
the Delaware River in 1787. It made trips between Burling- 
ton, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, a distance of twenty miles, 
but it moved so awkwardly, though it went pretty fast, that 
people said it was no good, and poor John Fitch died broken- 
hearted. But before he died he told the people a steamboat 
would yet be built to please them, and then they would be 
ashamed for laughing at him. 



ROBERT FULTON 



" Now," said Robert Fulton, after he had studied all about 
these other boats, "why can I not take a steam engine and 
instead of making it work a duck's foot, or pump in and 
out a stream of water, or work oars like men, all of which 
have been a 
failure, why 
can I not," 
he said to 
a friend, 
"make it to 
run paddle 
wheels such 
as 'we boys' 
used to use 
on our old 
flatbo ats, 
when we 
went fish- 



So Fulton 
thought i t 
over many 
days, and at 
last he got 
up two plans. 
You know 
he was now 
a great artist. 




JAMES WATT 
Came to think of the Power of Steam by observing the lid of his Mother's Tea 
Kettle bobbing up and down by the escaping Steam. 



He had also studied engineering while in Europe, and he had 
also studied navigation and written a book on the subject of 
running boats on canals, which was then a matter of very 
great interest in Europe. 



112 ROBERT FULTON 

In 1797, when Fulton was thirty-two years old, he met Mr. 
Joel Barlow, the American Minister to the Court of France. 
Mr. Barlow found Fulton was a very sensible young man and 
in every way a fine fellow, so he invited him to go to Paris 
and live in his family as long as he wished. Fulton accepted 
this kind invitation and went to Paris, which he made his home 
for seven years. He continued to study and to make inven- 
tions of various kinds, all the while keeping his plans for the 
steamboat in mind. He also learned the French language, 
and, by reading good books, tried to make up for his lack of 
education. 

After a while his friend, Mr. Barlow, gave up the position 
of American Minister to France, and a Mr. Livingston was 
appointed in his place. Fulton soon made the acquaintance 
and gained the friendship of this excellent man, and showed 
him his plans for a steamboat. Mr. Livingston had already 
read much on the subject, and was greatly interested in Ful- 
ton and his plans. One of these plans was to use paddles 
in a new way, and the other, as we have said, was to use the 
paddle wheels. They concluded that wheels would be the 
best, so Fulton built a small steamboat, which was to be tried 
on the River Seine in Paris. But the machinery was too heavy, 
and the boat broke in two in the middle before the trial. 

This, of course, was a very great disappointment to Fulton 
and Mr. Livingston, but it did not show their plan was a fail- 
ure, but that they had not built their boat strong enough. 
So Fulton went to work and built another boat, and a great 
crowd of the gay people of Paris gathered on the banks of 
the river to see it move. This trip was a success, and all the 
people shouted as it moved off in the river ; but it did not go 
as fast as they expected, and in this respect they were disap- 
pointed. But Fulton said he knew what the trouble was, and 



€>• 



ROBERT FULTON 113 

the next time he would shape his boat differently, and he was 
sure it would run fast enough. Mr. Livingston was also 
satisfied that this could be done. 

These men were both Americans ; and now that they were 
satisfied their boat would be a success, they determined to 
leave Paris, come to America, and build another boat in order 
that the first successful trip of a steamboat in the world might 
be made in their own native land. This was great patriotism, 
and they are entitled to our honor and respect for their 
loyalty to our country. 

So Fulton and his friend started for America. In the mean- 

ti m e Fulton :E3;oX.X,ANJD ^UBIvtAKJ>TE" 3C 

had made de- f 

signs for a new ( 

steam engine P^ 

to be built dif- (^^ ^^ • ^ — 

ferently from t;. .^ -^ ^^^^^ 

any others, so .[- 

that it would %-^^__^^^^^^^^^A 
exactly suit the fe'^^P^^^^^^^^^^^B 
purpose f o r g, 
which he de- 
sired it in running his steamboat. So he and Mr. Livingston 
sent their plans to James Watt, the inventor of the steam 
engine, who was then in the business of making steam engines 
for all sorts of purposes, and he built them just the kind of a 
machine that Fulton w^anted to furnish the power for his new 
steamboat. 

While the engine was being built in England, Fulton and 
Mr. Livingston were in New York building the boat. In this 
work Fulton looked after every detail. He was particularly 
careful to see that the shape of the boat was just right. In 



114 ROBERT FULTON 

the first place, he wanted it strong in the middle, so it would 
not be broken in two by the weight of the machinery or the 
force of the waves. He built several little models, and, it is 
said, floated them in a bathtub. He put little sails on them 
and would blow his breath against the sails to see how the 
differently shaped boats would move. He found that those 
with the very thin, narrow bow and stern would get through 
the water much easier than those with a wide bow and stern. 

He therefore made his new boat with a narrow, sloping bow, 
so that it would cut easily through the water. At last, when 
his boat was almost complete, the engine came and was placed 
in the boat where it could work the paddle wheels to the great- 
est advantage. He was also very careful in making the pad- 
dle wheels to see that they were perfectly true and correct. 
Then he placed a mast near the front and another near the 
stern of his boat, and to these he had sails attached, so that 
i( the wind should blow in the direction his boat was running 
he could hoist those sails and have the help of the wind in 
addition to the steam power. 

At last the boat was ready the engine was in place, and 
Fulton looked it over carefully and said it was all he could 
desire. He decided to make a bold start by running from 
New York up to Albany, a trip which the sail-boats had been 
making regularly every day or two. Albany, you know, is 
the Capital of the State, while New York is the great business 
city, where most of the large merchants live. Therefore, there 
was every day or two a large number of passengers going 
back and forth between New York and the beautiful city of 
Albany, which is about one hundred and fifty miles north of 
New York on the Hudson River. 

Mr. Livingston and Robert Fulton were very anxious to 
have as many well-known people as they possibly could get 



ROBERT FULTON 115 

to go on their boat, as they advertised in the papers several 
days before that the "Clermont" — that was the name of Fulton's 
new boat — would make its trip from New York to Albany on 
a certain day, and all those who wanted to go might have a 
free ride. 

The newspapers printed a great deal about the boat, but 
they did not believe it would be a success. Many people 
ridiculed it so much that the people talked about it, not as the 
steamer "Clermont," but as "Fulton's Folly." Some of the 
wiser men said that it Was all right to run a steam engine on 
a solid place on the ground, but if any one should put it on a 
floating boat, which was continually swaying about, it would 
cause the steam engine to explode, and it would blow every- 
thing to pieces, and the people who were foolish enough to 
go on it would, most likely, all be drowned. 

This was as unwise and poor an argument as was made by 
some of the philosophers in England when the first railroad 
train proposed to run twenty miles an hour. They said if the 
railroad train should go as fast as twenty miles an hour, the 
people could not get their breath, and they would all be dead 
when they came to the end of their journey. Even the doc- 
tors said this ; so the people were very much afraid of the 
railroad trains, until after it had been found that those who 
traveled twenty miles an hour were not dead, nor even sick from 
passing through the air so fast. 

The day for the boat to make its trial trip was Friday, 
August 1 1, 1807. Now, you know, some people are supersti- 
tious about Friday. They say that it is bad luck to move, or 
begin a new garment, or to start anything new on Friday ; 
but Fulton did not belong to this ignorant, stupid class. He 
thought that Friday was just as good a day as any to make a 
trial. Even if it had been the thirteenth day of the month, 



ii6 ROBERT PULTON 

it would have made no difference to him. He was not one of 
those silly people who would not sit down to the table with 
thirteen present any more than he thought Friday an unlucky 
day. He thought such ideas foolish. 

On the morning of August iith, Fulton went down to his 
boat very early. His engineer had been there all night, and 
had built a fire in the engine, and, when morning came, from 
the foot of Cortland Street, New York, the black smoke was 
seen puffing up from the large iron stack-pipe of the "Clermont." 
The whistle blew loud, and Fulton and Mr. Livingston stood 
on the deck and smiled at the great crowd that gathered to 
look at ''the wonderful sinoking monster,'' as some of the 
people called it. All the house-tops were filled with people, 
as they are now when a great naval parade or something 
extraordinary happens on the river. 

Mr, Fulton and Mr. Livingston hoped tc see some of the 
distinguished men of New York come down and get on their 
boat, but they were disappointed. It was all they could do to 
induce twelve people to accept their invitation, for everybody 
agreed that one could scarcely do a more risky thing than 
trust his life on that great " new-fangled" boat, as they called 
it, with a fire machine inside of it. No doubt there were 
young men and boys who would have been willing to risk 
their lives for the novelty of the trip, but their friends and 
parents would not let them. 

We think very strange of this now, but we must remember 
it was new then. Many people had never seen a steam engine 
of any kind and did not know anything about it ; and those 
who had seen one, as we told you, believed it would explode 
if put on a floating craft and shaken up and down, as it would 
be by the waves. At last, about one o'clock, long after the 
hour appointed for starting, Fulton grew afraid the twelve 



ROBERT FULTON 



117 



people whom he had gotten on board would become so fright- 
ened by the crowd on the bank that they would get off the 
boat ; so without waiting for more, he started off The boat 
moved beautifully, and all the people from the house-tops 
waved their handkerchiefs and shouted as it glided out like a 
great duck on the bosom of the North River. The tide was 
running slightly against them, and the wind was also in the 




WHAT YOU WOULD SEE TO-DAY AT A STEAMBOAT LANDING ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 



other direction ; hence, as they could not use their sails, they 
rolled them up tightly, and the people saw that the boat was 
traveling entirely by steam. The crowd was struck with won- 
der as they looked at the black smoke rushing from the pipes 
and the great paddle wheels revolving, throwing the spray 
into the air, and the boat speeding along without spreadmg 
her sails. 



"8 ROBERT FULTON 

If you look at a steamboat now, you will see that the pad- 
dle wheels on her sides are covered by what they call the 
wheel-house ; but Fulton did not think of this, and he left his 
great paddle wheels out in the air where everybody could see 
them. 

As the boat went up the river, all the wharves, piers and 
house-tops, and almost the whole water-front of the city, and 
the banks through the country, were thronged with the people. 
All along the route there was great excitement. Hats and 
handkerchiefs were waved and shouts and praises greeted the 
ears of the happy inventor, the captain, the crew and the pas- 
sengers. The "Clermont" was successful. Navigation by 
steam was a reality. Robert Fulton became that day one of 
the greatest men of his country. 

Now, how long do you suppose it took them to get to Al- 
bany ? If you were to go to New York now, and take one of 
the magnificent steamers which are made entirely ot steel, 
instead of wood, you would go to Albany in about ten hours. 
Of course, you don't expect that Fulton's boat ran as fast as 
one of these? He had no such powerful engines, and' boat 
building was not then so perfect as it is now, and it took Ful- 
ton just three times as long as it takes one of our present 
steamers to make the trip. The "Clermont" reached Al- 
bany in thirty-two hours from the time she left New York, 
but, as we said, she traveled against the wind and tide. In 
coming back she made the trip in thirty hours. That was 
very much faster, however, than any other boat had ever 
traveled on the Hudson River. 

After this, regular trips were made two or three times a 
week by the " Clermont " between Albany and New York, and 
Fulton had no lack of patronage. As soon as it was found 
out that there was no danger, nearly all the fine people who 



ROBERT PULTON 



119 



traveled beween the two cities paid a higher price to go by 
the steamer "Clermont," so Fulton and Mr. Livingston 
made money very fast. 

They got so much patronage that the " Clermont " could not 
carry one-fourth of the people who wanted to travel on her, 
and under Mr. Fulton's direction, in a short time, many other 
boats were built and plying, not only between New York and 
Albany, but on all the great American rivers. Mr. Fulton 




"CHICAGO," ONE OF THE "WHITE SQUADRON" WARSHIPS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

continued to labor to make more perfect machinery, and to 
have his boats built in a better shape for fast running. 

I wdll tell you a story about the ''Clermont's " first trip up 
the Hudson. It is said as she was plowing along in the night, 
she met some sail ships. The sailors had never heard of her 
or had not expected to meet her, and when they saw this 
creature of fire and smoke coming near them in the night, and 
heard her puffing and steaming, and her machinery planking 



I20 ROBERT FULTON 

and her wheels splashing in the water, they were so frightened 
that they were almost crazy. Some of them fell on their 
knees and prayed ; others took to small boats, and some even 
jumped overboard on the other side and swam ashore. Others 
ran with all their might down into the hold of their vessel and 
covered themselves up in the bunks in the forecastle to escape 
the monster. This true story was, perhaps, read by Mr. 
Samuel L. Clemens, our great American funny man, com- 
monly called " Mark Twain," before he wrote the funny story 
of Uncle Dan'l, the old negro, who became so frightened when 
he saw a steamboat coming up the Mississippi River, that he 
fell on his knees and prayed for deliverance, thinking that the 
steamboat was either the Lord himself, or else it was " old 
Satan" coming to destroy him. 

Now that Fulton built and successfully ran steamboats, 
what do you suppose happened to him ? Why, the very same 
thing that happens to every man or boy who shows that he 
knows something more than other people, or can do things 
that are useful to mankind. He became famous and got more 
work to do building steamboats than he could possibly do. 
The United States Government employed him to act as engi- 
neer for them in the construction of steamboats, the building 
of canals, and helping along navigation, which, you know, 
means travel by water 

He also made for the Government torpedoes, or war instru- 
ments, for blowing up vessels by exploding under the water. 
This, you know, he had invented and shown in Europe, but 
he did not then have any fame, and they did not think much 
of his invention. He was now able to improve them and get 
the Government to adopt them. Very many great war vessels 
in the world now carry torpedoes to use in this way, and for 
the suggestion we are, no doubt, indebted to Robert Fulton. 



ROBERT FULTON 



Our Government thought so much of Fulton and had so 
much confidence in his ability that Congress voted three hun- 
dred and twenty thousand (nearly one-half million) dollars to 
be used in building a steam warship under Fulton's direction. 
This act of 
the Govern- 
ment, show- 
i n g how 
much they 
esteemed the 
great inven- 
tor, gave 
Fulton more 
pleasure, he 
said, than 
anything 
else that 
happened in 
his life. It 
took more 
than one 
year to build 
this great 
warship, and 
it was suc- 
c e s s f u 1 1 y 
launched in 

the sight of a multitude of people, and what do you suppose 
the Government named it? I have no doubt that you will 
guess aright, for the great ship bore on its bow the name Ful- 
ton the First. It is believed by some that this ship furnished 
the model for the great Swede, John Ericsson, who afterw^ards 




ROBERT FULTON. 



122 ROBERT PULTON 

came to America and improved on Fulton's models, until we 
have the wonderful floating forts and terrible cruisers which now 
make up the war vessels of the great nations of the world. 

But Fulton not only knew about steamboats and steamboat 
machinery ; he was a thorough mechanic and understood the 
most difficult inventions of all kinds of machinery, and this 
knowledge helped him to expose a rascally fellow who was 
once imposing a fraud upon the people. This is how it was. 

You have heard about perpetual motion, have you not? 
Well, that means something which, when once set in motion, 
will move on forever without any new supply of power from 
without to keep it going. Many men have spent the greater 
part of their lives trying to discover or invent some new way of 
producing perpetual motion. Some have grown so much 
interested in the subject that they have lost their minds. 
Others have been so disappointed, after spending years in 
trying to discover it, that they have killed themselves over 
their disappointment. 

Well, in Fulton's time, there came a man to New York by 
the name of Redheffer, who said he had invented a perpetual 
motion machine. Many people paid a dollar a piece to see 
the wonder ; and even learned men visited it and could not 
account for its continual motion. They told Fulton about it. 
He said, it must be a "humbu«:," because he knew that no 
machine could be made that would run of itself. However, 
his friends kept coaxing him until he went with them to see 
it. After looking at it in a careless way, as others had 
done, Fulton sat down and began to study its motion. He 
noticed that its running was not regular. Sometimes it would 
go faster and sometimes slower. Then he became more con- 
vinced that it was a " humbug," and he put his ear closer up 
to the machine to listen. 



ROBERT FULTON 123 

Presently he said : '* This motion is made by some one turn- 
ing a crank," for he had noticed, when he was a boy, in turn- 
ing a grindstone, that the stone, in pushing the crank down 
and in pulHng it up, moved with a different rapidity. 
Hence, he concluded there must be someone turning a crank 
some\yhere, and he said : " If you people will help me, I will 
prove to you that what I say is true." 

The people agreed, and at once they set to work to pull 
off some strips of wood, when they saw a string running from 




^ODEL OP . .=^ 

U.S. AIam op War 

' -BuiLt- foR- E;(hiBiy . at- Wof\LD5.FAia 



MODEL OF A MODERN U. S. MAN OF WAR. 



the machine back through the wall and passing up through 
the floor above. They quickly ran upstairs and found an old 
man turning a crank, which was connected with the machine 
by the string. This old fellow had been there all the time 
turning this crank, while Redheffer pretended his machine was 
running of itself Fulton and his friends ran back to the 
machine-room, but somebody had told the impostor, Red- 
heffer, and he had run away and was never heard of after that. 
One of Fulton's greatest friends was the wise and. good Dr, 



124 ROBERT FULTON 

Franklin, of whom we have told you in a previous chapter in 
this book, and many are the pleasant evenings he may have 
spent with Dr. Franklin in explaining his new ideas and 
experiments. Besides the steamboat and torpedoes, which 
were his great inventions, Robert Fulton still found time 
for planning out flat-docks and many other improvements 
and inventions for the good of trade and convenience in 
his native country. With it all, he was so modest and 
quiet that, while he lived, very few people knew or thought of 
what a great man he was, until he was taken away by sudden 
death, in the year 1815, when he was only fifty years of age. 
After his death great steamers were built to cross the ocean, 
and locomotives were made to pull railroad trains over the 
world. We cannot honor Robert Fulton's memory too much. 
If he had not lived, perhaps to-day we would travel by sailing 
vessels, taking weeks of time instead of only a few days to 
cross the ocean. And but for him, perhaps, even the railroads 
would not be in use ; for, while he did not invent the railway 
locomotive, he built the first successful steamboat and made 
all the world recognize that steam could be used to give us 
faster modes of travel. Not only America, but every country 
in the world is indebted to Robert Fulton for teaching them 
this important truth. 

His life furnishes an interesting lesson to every ambitious 
and honest boy, however poor. There are other things more 
wonderful than the steamboat yet to be invented ; and as sim- 
ple little things, as Robert Fulton's paddles on the old flat- 
boat when he went fishing as a boy, will teach the boys of 
to-day how to invent. Then keep your eyes open and study 
the whys and wherefores of little things. Be studious as 
Robert Fulton was, and you may also become great and 
useful to your couutry and to mankind. 



THE NOTABLE HISTORY OF 

Abraham Lincoln, 

Sixteenth President of the United States. 



DID you ever 
read the fairy 
stories about 
the poor boy who be- 
came a prince? Do 
you wish to hear a 
true story about just 
such a boy ? Let me 
tell it to you. It is 
the story of Abraham 
Lincoln, the hero who 
saved his country. 
He was as poor a boy 
as ever lived in Amer- 
ica; he rose to be 
greater and grander 
and more royal than 
any prince, or king, 
or emperor who ever 
wore a crown. Lis- 
ten to his story: 



r 



m 




126 



126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

There was once a poor carpenter, who Hved in a miserable 
little log cabin out West. It was on a stony, weedy little 
hillside, at a place called Nolin's Creek, in Kentucky. 

In that log cabin, on the twelfth day of February, in the year 
1 809, a little baby was born. He was named Abraham Lincoln. 

I don't believe you ever saw a much poorer or meaner place 
in which to be born and brought up than that little log cabin. 
Abraham Lincoln's father was poor and lazy. He could not 
read and he hated to work. Abraham Lincoln's mother was a 
hard-working young woman, who dreamed about having nice 
things, but never did have them. Their house had no win- 
dows, it had no floor, it had none of the things you have in 
your pleasant homes. In all America no baby was ever born 
with fewer comforts, and poorer surroundings than little Abra- 
ham Lincoln. He grew from a baby to a homely little boy, 
and to a homelier-looking young man. He was tall and thin 
and gawky. His clothes never fitted him ; he never, in all his 
life, went to school but a year ; he had to work hard, he could 
play but little, and many a day, he knew what it was to be 
cold and hungry and almost homeless. 

His father kept moving about from place to place, living 
almost always in the woods, in Kentucky and Indiana and 
Illinois. Sometimes their home would be a log cabin, some- 
times it was just a hut with only three sides boarded up, and 
little Abraham Lincoln was a neglected and forlorn little fellow. 

His mother died when he was only eight years old. Then 
Abraham and his sister, Sarah, were worse off than ever. But 
pretty soon his father married a second wife, and Abraham's 
new mother was a good and wise woman. 

She washed him and gave him new clothes ; she taught him 
how to make the most and do the best with the few things he 
had and the chances that came to him ; she made him wish 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



127 



for better things ; she helped him fix himself up, and encour- 
aged him to read and study. 

This last was what Abraham liked most of all, and he was 
reading and studying all the time. There were not many 
books where he lived, but he borrowed all he could lay his 
hands on, and read them over and over. 




THE BOY LINCOLN STUDYING. 



He studied all the hard thino^s he could find books on, from 
arithmetic and grammar to surveying and law. He wrote on 
a shingle, when he could not get paper, and by the light of a 
log fire, when he could not get candles. He read and studied 
in the fields, when he was not working; on wood-piles, where 
he w^as chopping wood, or in the kitchen, rocking the cradle 



128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of any baby whose father or mother had a book to lend him. 
His favorite position for studying was to lay stretched out like 
the long boy he was, flat on the floor, in front of an open fire. 
Here he would read and write and cipher, after the day's work 
was over, until, at last, he grew to be as good a scholar as 
any boy round. 

Once he borrowed a book of an old farmer. It was a "Life 
of Washington." He read it and read it again, and when he 
was not reading it he put it safely away between the logs that 
made the wall of his log cabin home. But one day, there 
came a hard storm ; it beat against the cabin and soaked in 
between the logs and spoiled the book. Young Abraham 
did not try to hide the book nor get out of the trouble. He 
never did a mean thing of that sort. He took the soaked and 
ruined book to the old farmer, told him how it happened, and 
asked how he could pay for it. 

"Wall," said the old farmer, " 't'aint much account to me 
now. You pull fodder for three days and the book is yours." 

So the boy set to work, and for three days "pulled fodder" 
to feed the farmer's cattle. He dried and smoothed and pressed 
out the " Life of Washington," for it was his now. And that 
is the way he bought his first book. 

He was the strongest boy in all the country 'round. He 
could mow the most, plough the deepest, split wood the best, 
toss the farthest, run the swiftest, jump the highest and wrestle 
the best of any boy or man in the neighborhood. But though 
he was so strong, he was always so kind, so gentle, so obliging, 
so just and so helpful that everybody liked him, few dared 
to stand up against him, and all came to him to get work 
done, settle disputes, or find help in quarrels or trouble. 

When he was fifteen years old he was over six feet tall and 
very strong. No man or boy could throw him down in a 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 129 

wrestle. He was like Washington in this, for both men were 
remarkable wrestlers when they were boys. And both always 
wrestled fair. Once, when he had gone to a new place to live, 
the big boys got him to wrestle with their champion, and when 
the champion found he was getting the worst of it he began 
to try unfair ways to win. This was one thing that Lincoln 
never would stand — unfairness or meanness. He caught the 
big fellow, lifted him in the air, shook him as a dog shakes a 
rat, and then threw him down on the ground. The big bully 
was conquered. He was a friend and follower of Lincoln as 
long as he lived, and you may be sure the "boys" all about 
never tried any more mean tricks on Abraham Lincoln. 

So he grew, amid the woods and farms, to be a bright, 
willing, obliging, active, good-natured, fun-loving boy. He 
had to work early and late, and when he was a big boy he 
went to work among the farmers, where he hired as a "hired 
man." He could do anything, from splitting rails for fences 
to rocking the baby's cradle; or from hoeing corn in the field 
to telling stories in the kitchen. 

And how he did like to tell funny stories ! Not always 
funny, either. For, you see, he had read so much and remem- 
bered things so well that. he could tell stories to make people 
laugh and stories to make people think. He liked to recite 
poetry and "speak pieces," and do all the things that make 
a person good company for every one. He would sit in front 
of the country store or on the counter inside and tell of all the 
funny things he had seen, or heard, or knew. He would make 
up poetry about the men and women of the neighborhood, or 
"reel off " a speech upon things that the people were interested 
in, until all the boys and girls, and the men and women, too, said 
"Abe Lincoln," as they called him, knew about everything, and 
was an "awful smart chap." Sometimes they thought he knew 



I30 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



^ r^^ 




too much ; for once, when he tried to explain to one of the girls 
that the earth turned around and the sun did not move, she 
would not believe him, and said he was fooling her. But she 
lived to learn that " Abe," as she called him, was not a fool, 
but a bright, thoughtful, studious boy, who understood what 
he read and did not forget it. 

He worked on farms, ran a ferry-boat across the river, 

split rails for 
far m fences, 
worked an oar 
on a "flat- 
boat," got up 
a machine for 
lifting boats 
out of the mud, 
kept store, did 
all sorts of 
"oddjobs" 
for the farmers 
and their 
\\- i \^ e s, and 
was, i n fact, 
what we call a 
regular "Jack 
of all trades." 

And all the time, though he was jolly and liked a good time, 
he kept studying, studying, studying until, as I have told you, 
the people where he lived said he knew more than anybody else. 
Some of them even said that they knew he would be President 
of the United States some day, he was so smart. 

The work he did most of all out-of-doors, was splitting great 
logs into rails for fences. He could do as much as three men 



^v 




LINCOLN. 



WRESTLER. 



AHK\AI1AM l.lNllDl.N 



i.'J 



.it tlii^ work, lie was so s(i..i);;. Willi one Mow lie ( oiiM I II .1 
l)lll\ llic .i\r in lllf wood. ( )lh c \\c ',|>lil ciioll;;!! r.lil'> lol .1 
w oiii.in to |».i\ Itu' .1 suit o( ( lollic . -Ill- iii.idc lor liim. .md .ill the 
l,lmll■I^ round Iiki-d toii.ixr " .\l)c I.iii(t>ln."' .t ■ iIm \ <.ill.d 
liim, '.plit llicir I. Ills. 

lie I on Id t.iki" tin- li( ,i\ \ .i\f 1>\ tlic ( nd ol 111! Ii.indlf .ind 



:r 



> 'N 



i 



;(. 





'■'1 



I INCOLN. AH IIIKI I I INt. A UU.KY, 

hold ii out sliMi;.dit iVoni his ^llonid« i. I li.il i - •.oinctliin;' lli.it 
oidy .1 vt-ry slroni^-.trincd person (.in d(», In ku t. .is I li,i\c 
told you, lu' was tlu* chain pioii stroii-.- hoy of his nci'dihoi li< »od. 
and. though he w.is never (Hi.ii i (■ls( mie or .i h;dil( i, Ik dnl 
enjoy a liieiidly wrestle, .ind, weaic lold, th.il he (oiild strike 
the h.ii.h 4 l)low with .i\e or in. ml, juinj) higher and f.irlhcr 



132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

than any of his comrades, and there was no one, far or near, 
who could put him on his back. He made two trips down the 
long Ohio and the broad Mississippi rivers to the big city of 
New Orleans, in Louisiana. He sailed on a clumsy, square, 
flat-bottomed scow, called a flatboat. Lincoln worked the 
forward oar on the flatboat, to guide the big craft through the 
river currents and over snags. 

On these trips he first saw negro men and women bought 
and sold the same as horses, pigs and cattle, and from that 
day, all through his life, he hated slavery. When he became 
a young man, a war broke out in the Western country with 
the Indians. They were led by the famous Indian chief called 
Black Hawk. Lincoln went with the soldiers to fight Black 
Hawk. He was thought so much of by his companions that 
they made him captain of their company. 

Captain Lincoln's soldiers all liked him, and they were just 
like boys together. Sometimes they were pretty wild boys 
and gave him a good deal of trouble, but he never got real 
angry at them but once. That was when a poor, broken-down, 
old Indian came into camp for food,and shelter, and Lincoln's 
"boys " were going to kill him just because he was an Indian. 
But Lincoln said, " For shame ! " He protected the old 
Indian, and standing up in front of him, said he would knock 
down the first man that dared to touch him. The soldiers . 
knew that Lincoln meant what he said, and thought even 
more of him after that. And the old Indian's life was saved. 

When the soldiers' time was up, and most of them went 
back home, Lincoln would not go with them. He joined 
another regiment as a private soldier and staid in the army 
until the Indians were beaten and driven away, and Black 
Hawk was taken prisoner. Then Lincoln started for home 
with another soldier boy. They had great adventures. Their 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



»33 



^T 



horse was stolen, and they had to walk ; then they found an 
old canoe and paddled down the rivers until the canoe was 
upset and they were nearly drowned ; then they walked again 
until they "got a lift" on a row-boat, and so, at last, walking 
and paddling, they got back to their homes, poor and tired 
out, but strong and healthy young men. 

Then Lincoln tried store-keeping again. He had already 
been a clerk in a country store ; now he set up a store of his 
own. He was not ^ — i 

very successful. He 
loved to read and 
study better than to 
wait on customers, 
and he was so oblig- 
ing and goodnatured 
that he could not 
make much money. 
Then he had a part- 
ner who was lazy and 
crood for nothin^^, 
and who eot him into 



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i \ 
'^'^. 



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i^'^^^i: 



I: 



M 



LINCOLN KEEPING STO! 



trouble. But, through i 
it all, Lincoln never e 
did a mean or dis- 
honest thing. He paid all his debts, though it took him years 
to do this, and he could be so completely trusted to do the 
right thing for everyone that all the people round about learned 
to call him "Honest Abe Lincoln." That's a good nick- 
name, isn't it? 

After Lincoln got through keeping store he was so much 
liked by the people that they chose him to go to the capital 
of the State, as one of the men who made laws for the State 



134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of Illinois, in what is called the State Legislature. He was 
sent to the Legislature again and again, and one of the first 
things he did was to draw up a paper, saying what a wicked 
thing slavery was. 

At that time, you know, almost everybody in the southern 
half of the United States owned ne^o men and women and 
children, just as they owned horses and dogs and cows. Lin- 
coln did not believe in this. Once, when he was in New Or- 
leans, on one of his flatboat trips, he went into a dreadful 
place where they sold men and women at auction. It made 
young Lincoln sick and angry, and he said if ever he got the 
chance he would hit slavery a blow that would hurt it — though, 
of course, he did not think he was ever to have the real chance 
to "hit it hard " that did come to him. 

But when he was a young man no one said much against 
slavery, and the people thought Lincoln was foolish to act and 
talk as he did. But, you see, one of the strongest things about 
Abraham Lincoln was that he was sympathetic — that is, he felt 
sorry for any one in trouble. He was tender, even with ani- 
mals — pigs and horses, cats and dogs, and birds. If he found 
a little bird on the ground, he would take it up tenderly and 
hunt around until he found its nest, and leave it there. He 
would get down from his horse to pull a pig out of the mud, 
and, when he was a boy, he went back across an icy and rush- 
ing river to help over a poor little dogthat was afraid to cross. 
So you will not wonder that, when he grew to be a man, he 
hated slavery, for slavery was unkindness to men and women. 

After he came back from the LecrisLiiure, he became a 
lawyer — he had always been studying law, you know. He 
was a bright, smart and successful lawyer. What is better 
still, he was a good and honest one. He never would take 
a case he did not believe in, and once when a man came to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 135 

engage him to help get some money from a poor widow, Lin- 
coln refused, and gave the man such a scolding that the man 
did not try it again. So Mr. Lincoln grew to be one of the 
best lawyers in all that Western country. 

Because he was so wise and brave in speech and action, 
Lincoln rose to be what is called a great politician. He and 




-=Si 




1 



another famous man, named , ' / / 

Douglas, looked at things 
differently, and they had 

long public talks or discus- / 

sions about politics and 

slavery. These discussions f^ \^...^^.'~^^..^.^ ^-^^., ,..,v • ^ 
were held where all the Lincoln on the flat boat. 

people could hear them, in big halls or out of doors, and crowds 
of people went to listen to these talks, so that very soon every- 
body "out West" and people all over the country had heard 
of Lincoln and Douglas. 

At last came a time when the people of the United States 
were to choose a new President. And what do you think ? 
These two men were picked out by the opposite parties to be 



136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

voted for by the people — Lincoln by the Republicans, and 
Douglas by the Democrats. 

And on election day the Republicans won. The poor little 
backwoods boy, the rail-splitter, the flat-boatman, the farm- 
hand, was raised to the highest place over all the people. 
Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. 

Is not that as good as your fairy story of the poor boy who 
became a prince ? It is even better, for it is true. 

It was a great honor, but it meant hard work and lots of 
worry for Abraham Lincoln. Bad times were coming for 
America. 

The men of the South, who believed in slavery and said 
that their States had everything to say, stood up against the 
men of the North, who did not believe in slavery, and said 
that the Government of the United States had more to say 
than any one of the separate States. 

Thus the men of the South said, "You do as we say, or we 
will break up the Union." 

And the men of the North said, "You cannot break it up. 
The union of all the States shall be kept, and you must stay 
in it." 

The South said, "We won't; we will secede" — that is, draw 
out of the Union. 

The North said, "You shall not secede. We will fight to 
keep you in and preserve the Union." 

The South said, "We dare you!" 

The North said, "We'll take that dare!" 

And then there was war. 

Abraham Lincoln, when he was made President, spoke 
beautifully to the people, and begged them not to quarrel. 
But, at the same time he told them that whatever happened, 
he was there to save the Union, and he should do so. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



137 



But his words then had little effect. War had to come, and 
it came. For four dreadful years the men of the North and the 
men of the South fought each other for the mastery on Southern 
battle- 
fields. ^^'■• 
Many des- 
perate and 
terr i b 1 e 
battles 

were 
fought, for 
each side 
was bound 
to win. 
Neither 
side would 
give in, 
and brave 
soldiers, 

under 

brave 
lea ders, 
did many 
gallant 

deeds 
under that 
terr i b 1 e 

necessity that men call war. This war was especially dread- 
ful, because it was just like two brothers fighting with each 
other, and you know how dreadful that must be. 

During all those four years of war Abraham Lincoln lived in 
the President's house at Washington — the White House, as it 







LINCOLN ENTERING RICHMOND, 



138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

is called. He had but one wish — to save the Union. He did 
not mean to let war, nor trouble, nor w^icked men destroy the 
nation that Washington had founded. He was always ready 
to say, " We forgive you," if the men of the South would only 
stop fighting and say, "We are sorry." But they would not 
do this, much as the great, kind, patient, loving President 
wished them to. 

That he was kind and loving all through that terrible war 
we know very well. War is a dreadful thing, and when it is 
going on some hard and cruel things have to be done. The 
soldiers who are sick or wounded often must first suffer to 
become well. As they lay in their hospitals, after some dreadful 
battle had torn and maimed them, the good President would 
walk through the long lines of cot-beds, talking kindly with 
the wounded soldiers, sending them nice things, doing every- 
thing he could to relieve their sufferings and make them 
patient and comfortable. 

In war, too, you know, even brave soldiers often get tired 
of the fighting and the privations and the delay, and wish to 
go home to see their wives and children. But they cannot, 
until it is time for them. So, sometimes they get impatient 
and run away. This is called desertion, and when a deserter 
is caught and brought back to the army, he is shot. 

Now President Lincoln was so loving and tender-hearted 
that he could not bear to have any of his soldiers shot because 
they had tried to go home. So, whenever he had a chance, 
he would write a paper saying the soldier must not be shot. 
This is called a pardon, and whenever a weak or timid soldier 
was arrested and sentenced to be shot as a deserter, his friends 
would hurry to the good President and beg him to give the 
man a pardon. He almost always did it. "I don't see how 
it will do the man any good to shoot him," he would say. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



139 



"Give me the paper, I'll sign it," and so the deserter would 
go free, and perhaps make a better soldier than ever, because 
the good President had saved him. 

The question of slavery was always coming up in this war 
time. But when some of the men at the North asked Lincoln 
to set all the slaves in the land free, he said: " The first thing 
to do is to save the Union; 
after that we'll see about 
slavery." 

Some people did not 
like that. They said the 
President was too slow 
But he was not. He was 
the wisest man in all the 
world; the only one who 
could do just the right 
thing, and he did it. 

He waited patiently 
until just the right time 
came. He saw that the 
South was not willing to 
give in, and that some- 
thing must be done to 
show them that the North 
was just as determined as 
they were. So, after a great victory had been won by the sol- 
diers of the Union, Abraham Lincoln wrote a paper and sent 
it out to the world, saying that on the first day of Januar}^ in 
the year 1863, all the slaves in America should be free men 
and women — what we call emancipated — and that, forever 
after, there should be no such thing as slavery in free 
America. 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



I40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

It was a great thing to do. It was a greater thing to do it 
just as Lincoln did it, and, while the world lasts, no one will 
ever forget the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lin- 
coln. Still, the war went on. But, little by little, the South 
was growing weaker, and, at last, in the month of April, 1865, 
the end came. The Southern soldiers gave up the fight. 
The North was victorious. The Union was saved. 

You may be sure that the great and good President was 
glad. He did not think that he had done so very much. It 
was the people who had done it all, he said. But the people 
knew that Lincoln had been the leader and captain who had 
led them safely through all their troubles, and they cheered 
and blessed him accordingly. 

But do you think the poor black people whom he had set 
free blessed him? They did, indeed. 

When President Lincoln at last stood in the streets of 
Richmond, which had been the Capital of the Southern States, 
he was almost worshipped by the colored people. They 
danced, they sang, they cried, they prayed, they called down 
blessings on the head of their emancipator — the man who 
had set them free. They knelt at his feet, while the good 
President, greatly moved by what he saw, bowed pleasantly 
to the shouting throng, while tears of joy and pity rolled down 
his care-wrinkled face. Don't you think it must have been a 
great and blessed moment for this good and great and noble 
man? But it was the same all over the land. There was 
cheering and shouting and thanksgiving everywhere for a re- 
united nation, and even the South, weary with four years of 
unsuccessful war, welcomed peace and quiet once more. 

Then, who in all the world was greater than Abraham Lin- 
coln? He had done it all, people said, by his wisdom, his 
patience and his determination, and the splendid way in which 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 141 

he had directed everything from his home in the White House. 
The year before, in the midst of the war, he had been elected 
President for the second time. '* It is not safe to swap horses 
when you are crossing a stream," he said. So the people 
voted not to ''swap horses." 

Lincoln made a beautiful speech to the people when he was 
again made President, He spoke only of love and kindness 
for the men of the South, and, while he said the North must 
fight on to the end and save the Union, they must do it not 
hating the South, but loving it. 

And this is the way he ended that famous speech. Remem- 
ber his words, boys and girls ; they are glorious : "With malice 
toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as 
God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are 
jj^ * * * and achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves and with all nations." 

But just when the w^ar was ended, when peace came to the 
land again; when all men saw what a grand and noble and lov- 
ing and strong man the great President was; when it looked 
as if, after four years of worry, weariness and work, he could 
at last rest from his labors and be happy, a wicked, foolish and 
miserable man shot the President, behind his back. And, on 
the morning of the fifteenth of April, in the year 1865, Abra- 
ham Lincoln died. Then how all the land mourned ! South, 
as well as North, wept for the dead President. All the world 
sorrowed, and men and women began to see what a great and 
noble man had been taken away from them. 

The world has not got over it yet. Every year and every 
day only makes Abraham Lincoln greater, nobler, might:. 
No boy ever, in all the world, rose higher from poorer bcgii: 
nings. No man who ever lived did more for the world tlian 
Abraham Lincoln, the American. 



142 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



He saw what was right, and he did it; he knew what was 
true, and he said it; he felt what was just, and he stuck to it. 
So he stands to-day, for justice, truth and right. 

You do not understand all this now, as you listen to these 
words and look at these pictures. But some day you will, and 
you will then know that it was because Abraham Lincoln lived 
and did these things that you have to-day a happy home in a 
great, free, rich and beautiful country — "The land of the free 
and the home of the brave." 

So remember this, now, boys and girls: You are free and 
happy in America to-day, because Abraham Lincoln saved for 
you to live in the land that George Washington made free. 




LINCOLN'S GRAVE, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS. 



THE REMARKABLE HI5T0RY OF 

Ulvsses S. Grant, 

General of the Armies of the United States. 



^\^.yf 





THIS is the story 
of a great soldier 
and a good 
man. Everybody likes 
to see soldiers march- 
ing with their drums 
and guns and flags and 
uniforms. They make 
a fine sight, and the 
boys and girls all hur- 
rah and clap their hands 
as the regiments march 
by. But when these 
soldiers go marching 
to battle, it is quite 
another thing. For war 
is terrible, and some of 
the best and bravest 



" I propose to 

most, 
rels can 



move Immediately upon your works."— Cirw. O'.S. Grant. SOldiCrS hate it th 



Sometimes, however, great questions and bitter quar- 
be settled only by war and fighting, and then it is well 

143 



144 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

for the people to have their armies led to battle by such a 
great and gallant soldier as this story tells about. 

His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant He was born in a 
little town, out in Ohio, called Point Pleasant, on the twenty- 
seventh of April, in the year 1822. The house in which he 
was born is still standing. It is on the banks of the Ohio 
River, and you can look across to K&ntucky, on the other side 
of the river. 

When Ulysses was only a year old his father moved to a 
place called Georgetown, not far away, and there he spent his 
boyhood. 

He was a strong, healthy, go-ahead little fellow, who did not 
like to go to school very well. But, if he had anything to do, 
either in work or play, he stuck to it, until it was done. 

When he was seventeen years old, Ulysses was sent to the 
splendid school among the beautiful highlands of the Hudson 
River, in New York, where boys are taught to become soldiers 
of the United States Army. This is called the United States 
Military Academy, at West Point. 

He stayed four years at this famous school. He did not 
like the school part of it any more at West Point than he did 
at his Ohio school-house, but he loved horses, and became a 
fine horseback rider. 

When he left West Point, he was made second lieutenant 
in the United States Army. He went home, but in a year or 
two there was a war between the United States and the coun- 
try that joins us on the south. It is called Mexico, and this 
war is called the Mexican War. 

Young Ulysses Grant went to this war as first lieutenant 
and fought the Mexicans in many bloody battles. He was a 
daring young officer, and his men followed willingly wherever 
he led. In one of the hardest battles in this war with Mexico 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



145 



— the battle of Monterey— the American soldiers charged into 
the town and then got out of ammunition — that is, powder 
and shot. To get any more, some one would have to ride 
straight through the fire of the Mexicans, who were in the 
houses of the town; so the general did not think he could 
order any soldier to do this. But he asked who would do it. 
This is what is meant by calling for volunteers. 





1 







,s.i 



GRANTS CHILDHOOD HOME. 

Lieutenant Cxrant said at once he would go. He mounted 
his horse, but slipped over on the side furthest from the houses 
in which the Mexicans were hiding. Then he set his horse 
on a gallop, and so dashed through the town and past all the 
hostile houses, and brought back the ammunition in safety. 
He did many other brave and soldierly things when he was 
a young officer in this war with Mexico, but he was always 



146 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

such a modest man that he never Hked to tell of his courage- 
ous deeds. When he did, he would generally say: "O, well; 
the battle would have been won, just as it was, if I had not 
been there." The brave men and the bravest boys, you know, 
never boast. 

In another of these battles in the Mexican war — it has a 
long, hard name — Chepultepec, young Grant was so bold and 
brave that his name was picked out as that of one of the brav- 
est soldiers in the fight. 

At another time, when a strong fort was in the path of the 
Americans, Lieutenant Grant dragged a small cannon away 
up in a church steeple, and pointing it at the fort, fired his 
cannon balls so swift and straight and sure that the Mexican 
soldiers had to run out of the fort, and the Am.ericans marched 
into it and soon after took the city it had defended. And 
when the news of this fight had been sent home to the United 
States, young Grant's brave act was made a part of it, and he 
was promoted to be a captain. The Mexicans were defeated in 
many battles, and, at last the cruel war was ended. The Ameri- 
cans were victorious and marched back north to their homes. 

Then Captain Grant married his wife; but, soon after, he 
had to go without her to California and Oregon, where his 
regiment was sent. He had a hard time getting there, for the 
dreadful cholera broke out while the soldiers were on the way, 
and if it had not been for Captain Grant's bravery and devo- 
tion most of the soldiers and their wives and children would 
have died. You see, a man can be just as brave taking care 
of sick people as when fighting in battle. 

After he had been in Oregon for a while he got tired of 
doing nothing, so he gave up being a soldier, and went back 
to his little farm near St. Louis, in Missouri. He lived in a 
log-house on this farm with his wife and children, and at times 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



147 






^ 



%- 



was quite poor. He tried farming, and buying and 
horses and collecting bills, and, at last, moved from St. 
to the town of 
Galena, in Il- 
linois, where 
he became 
a tanner and 
made leather 
with his fath- 
er and his 
brothers. 

W h i 1 e 
Grant w a s 
an unknown 
tanner in Il- 
linois a fear- 
ful thing oc- 
curred in 
America. 
The North- 
ern and 
Southern 
S t a t e s 
which, join- 
ed together, 
made these 
United 
States of 



selling 
Louis 









GRANT AFTER THE BATTLE OF BELMONT. 



things 



that, 



America, became angry with each other over 
some day, you will learn all about in school. 

The South said: "We won't stay in the Union any longer.'* 
The North said: "You've got to stay. We won't letyou go.'* 



148 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

But the South determined to go, and, in the year 1861, they 
had gone and had made a new nation of themselves. Then 
the North said the South could not go and should not go, and 
tried to keep them in the Union by force. 

They began to fight with each other, and there was a terri- 
ble war in the land. We call it now the War of the Rebel- 
lion, or the Civil War. Captain Grant joined the army at 
once and marched away to the war with some soldiers from 
his own town, and, after a while, he was given command of a 
regiment and made a colonel. Soon after that he was pro- 
moted to be a brigadier-general. 

After the war had been going on for several months the 
men who were at the head of things found out what a good 
soldier General Grant was, and he was given command of a 
large number of men and marched with them against the Con- 
federates, as the Southern soldiers were called. 

There were some hard battles fought, among them that of 
Belmont, on the Mississippi, at which village a severe engage- 
ment took place. But Grant was victorious, and at last he 
got the Confederate soldiers cooped up in a place called Fort 
Donelson. 

When the general of the Confederate soldiers asked General 
Grant how he could save his soldiers and get out of the fort 
alive, the General said: "Unconditional surrender." That 
means, give me your fort and all your soldiers and guns and 
flags and swords. Then I will not fight you. If you will 
not do this, I shall make you do it. 

There was no other way, so the Confederates surrendered 
Fort Donelson. It was a great victory for the Northern sol- 
diers, and everybody praised General Grant. Then he marched 
to another place. It was called Shiloh. There was a terrible 
battle here. At first it was almost a defeat for the Union 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



149 



soldiers, but General Grant stuck to it and fought so bravely, 
that at last the Confederates were beaten and driven back. 
It was the first o^reat battle of the war. It continued through 






1 



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' ft > 



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GRANT AT SHILOH. 



two April days — Saturday and Sunday. The Confederates 
were led by their best and bravest general, Albert Sidney 
Johnston. Had it not been for General Grant's bravery, 
determination, persistence and good leadership, the Northern 



I50 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

troops would surely have been beaten, and the Union cause 
would have been sadly put back. 

But he stuck to it. He must win, that was all. And he 
did win. He rode up and down the line all that terrible 
Saturday and Sunday, giving orders, directing and encourag- 
ing his men. For he knew that they were mostly soldiers 
who had never seen a battle, and he knew that unless they 
were made braver by the courage and bravery of their lead- 
ers, they would not make good soldiers. 

So all through this dreadful battle of Shiloh, in which the 
dash and bravery of the South first met the courage and 
endurance of the North, General Grant was in the thick of it, 
inspiring his soldiers, bringing victory out of defeat, and show- 
ing the world what a great general he really was. 

So he kept driving the Confederate soldiers off whenever he 
fought them. They were brave, too, for they also were Am.eri- 
cans. But they had not so great a general to lead them in 
battle. At last Grant got the Southern army cooped up in a 
town called Vicksburg. He marched his soldiers against it 
and built forts around it and banged away at it with his great 
cannons until at last, when the Confederates in the town could 
get no help and could not get away, they gave up the town 
and all its forts and soldiers and guns to General Grant. 
That was the surrender of Vicksburg. It was another splen- 
did victory. 

Then General Grant was promoted to be a major-general, 
and marched off to fight more of the bold Southern soldiers. 
He fought them again at a place called Chattanooga, among 
the mountains. This was so hard a battle and so great a vic- 
tory for General Grant that the United States gave him a gold 
medal to commemorate it. Then he was given command of all 
the armies of the United States. So far he had fought in the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



151 



West. Now he came East and took the lead of all the North- 
ern soldiers in Virginia, which was called the Army of the 
Potomac. He fought the Confederates and their brave leader, 
General Lee, for a whole year in Virginia. There were some 
dreadful bat- 
tles. There 
never were 
harder ones in 
all the world. 
But General 
Grant knew 
that if he wish- 
ed to win, he 
must fight hard 
and terribly. 
The hardest 
fighting of all 
that cruel war 
was now to 
come, you see. 
It was in the 
region that 
separated the 
two capitals — 
Washington, 
the capital of 

tne United ulysses s. grant. 

States, and Richmond,' the Southern capital. Much of the 
fighting was in a section covered with thick woods and under- 
brush, and called " The Wilderness." For sixteen days the 
two armies faced each other in this wilderness, so close 
together that they could talk across, and so, watching by night 
10 




152 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

and fighting by day, the two generals, Lee, the Confederate, 
and Grant, the Union leader, fought each other in the most 
tremendous and desperate battles of modern times. 

They ended at last, not by really defeating Lee, but by 
forcing him back, inch by inch, until Grant and his soldiers 
got nearer to Richmond. You see, the men of the Nordi and 
the men of the South had now grown to be trained and coura- 
geous soldiers, and they were so equally matched in num- 
bers, bravery and determination, and were so ably led by their 
commanding generals that the conflict was a stubborn and 
desperate one. 

But General Grant would not be defeated. He never gave 
up; and when, in the hot w^eather, things seemed going badly 
and he was asked what he meant to do, he said, "Fight it out 
on this line, if it takes all summer." 

It did take all summer, and all the winter, too; but, at last, 
this great soldier was successful. The Southerners were 
beaten, and their gallant leader, General Lee, at a place called 
Appomattox Court House, on April 9, 1865, surrendered all 
his soldiers and flags and guns to General Grant. It was the end 
to a long and bitter w^ar. Probably no other soldier in Amer- 
ica could have defeated General Lee and his soldiers except 
General Grant. The Southern soldiers were brave and deter- 
mined; they were desperate; for they knew if they did not 
beat Grant and capture Washington the cause of the South 
must be given up. 

So they fought on, even after they began to get hungry and 
ragged, and the South was poor and empty. Gradually, how- 
ever, they grew weaker; and still General Grant kept at it, 
forcing them back, back, until at last they fled from Richmond. 
The Southern soldiers w^ere beaten or captured, and, as I have 
told you. General Lee surrendered at last to General Grant at 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



153 



Appomattox Court House. The war was over. The North had 
won the great fight that had lasted through four terrible years, 
and General U. S. Grant was hailed as ''the Conqueror." 

It is hard for the boys and girls who have quarreled and got 
the best of it, not to clasp their hands and talk big. It is even 



r-^^ 




W] 



w o m e n. 
when he 
would not 




Ml: 




harder for men and 
But General Grant, 
had won the victory, 
"crow" over the 
defeated Southern- 
ers. "They are 
Americans," he 
said. He gave 
them back their 
horses so that they 
could plough their 
farms for planting; 
he gave them food 
and clothes, and 
sent them away 
friends; he said to 
South alike: "The 
Let us have 
course his great 
him a hero. He 
he hated to be so talked about ; he never made a show of him- 
self, nor said, as a good many boys and men do when they 
have done something fine: "Look at me!" General Grant 
was quiet, modest and silent. Of course, the world thought 
all the more of him because he did not try to put himself for- 
ward. His own land thought so much of him that they twice 
made him President of the United States, just as they did 



GRANT AT WINDSOR CASTLE. 



■'JJ 


North 


and 


w a r is 


over. 


peace.' 


Of 


success 


made 


was one. 


But 



154 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

Washington. It was a pretty good rise for a little Western 
farmer boy and tanner, wasn't it? After he was through being 
President he left his country and traveled around the world, 
and the world did him honor. 

Kings and queens and princes invited him to their palaces 
and were glad to see him. He visited the Queen of England 
in her palace of Windsor Castle; he talked with the soldiers 
and statesmen of the world, while emperors honored him as 
one of the world's famous men, and cities welcomed him as 
the foremost general of the day, and the man who had been 
President of the world's mightiest Republic. 

Amid all these festivities, in all lands and in all scenes set 
to do him honor, General Grant was still the same modest, 
quiet, silent man he had been all his life. The brilliant car- 
nival at Havana, which he saw and which honored him; the 
curious and strange surroundings in far-off Japan, where they 
were beginning to think and act for themselves; the court of 
China, which few Americans had ever seen; the storied places 
of the East — Jerusalem, Damascus, Constantinople, Alexan- 
dria — all these he visited, and in all he was welcomed and 
pointed out to the boys and girls of every nation, tribe and 
land as the great American — the visitor from the land beyond 
the sea. Great men, wherever he went, called upon him and 
made friends with him, and, as I have said, the people every- 
where, in Japan and China, and Egypt and Turkey, and Rus- 
sia and Germany, and Italy and France, and England ran 
after him just as their kings and princes had done. They 
hurrahed for him and made much of him. Never before had 
any man been so honored and entertained the world over 
as had General Grant. 

For, you see, people everywhere knew that General Grant 
was a great man, who, by his patience, his perseverance, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



155 



and his wisdom had carried a mighty nation through a terri- 
ble war, and won it ; had been made the chief man of that 
nation, and shown all the world how a man can be a great 




GRANT IN JAPAN. 

soldier and yet a quiet, simple, modest man. But they were 
to see him fight one other battle — the hardest that any boy or 
girl, any man or woman can fight — the battle against wrong 



156 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

and death. He came back from his travels round the world, 
and as he did not like to be idle, he put what money he had 
into business and began — so he thought — to grow rich. He 
made his home in New York City, in a fine house which the 
people who honored him had given him as a token of. their 
respect and affection and their pride in the man who had done 
so much for them in four years of war, and who had governed 
his native land as President through eight years of peace. 

But his business ventures turned out badly. A wretched 
man worked against him, using the General's honorable name 
to mislead the people, and taking for himself both their money 
and that of General Grant. 

All of a sudden the end came. The bad man ran away and 
General Grant found himself without a cent. All his money 
was gone, and worse than that, others who had trusted in him 
had lost their money, too. It broke the great general down. 
It almost defeated the soldier who had never known defeat. 
It made him weak and sick. 

But, just as he had marched to war courageously, so, now, 
he faced disaster just as bravely. He set to work to make his 
losses good, and, because all the the world wished to hear 
about him, he began to write the story of his life and his bat- 
tles. By his power of will he succeeded in keeping himself 
alive to do this. For over a year he fought ruin and a 
terrible pain as stoutly as he had ever battled with real 
soldiers, while all the world looked on in love and pity, and 
kings and beggars sent him words of sympathy. He won 
the fight, for he did not give up until his book was finished. 
Then he died. On the twenty-first of July, in the year 1885, 
on the mountain-top to which he had been carried, near Sara- 
toga, in New York, General Grant died, and all the world 
mourned a great man gone. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



157 



The world mourned; men and women everywhere had 
learned to honor the great general as much for his victories 
over disaster, disgrace and pain as for his conquests in war 
and his governing in peace. His funeral, on August 8, 
1885, was one of the grandest public ceremonials ever seen 
in America. The President of the United States, senators, 







and other famous 
York to show their 
and the poor boy of 
was buried amid 
of bells and firing 



governors, judge 
men came to New 
sorrow and esteem, 

the western prairies __ _ -^„_ -"Lv 
the solemn tolling grant-s funeral pRocEssior 
of cannon, while all people and all lands sent words of 
sorrow and sympathy to the Republic which so honored 
him in death as it had honored him in life. Upon a beauti- 
ful knoll in a beautiful park in New York rises a stately 
monument above his tomb. In the City of Chicago, in the 
State from which he came from poverty to fame, another 
splendid monument towers in his honor. 

His is not an uncommon name, and yet in all America, in 
all the world, there is but one Grant! 



158 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 



His story is one from which even the smallest boy and the 
tiniest girl can learn something. For it teaches them to be 
persistent, yet modest; strong, yet simple; magnanimous in 
victory; patient in distress and defeat. He was a great soldier, 
but he hated war; yet, when he had to fight, he did fight, and 
nothing could put him aside from the end he had in view. 

Though he became the foremost man of the world, he was 
always a quiet, modest and simple American gentleman, and, 
when he had to face both pain and loss, he did so patiently, 
uncomplainingly and heroically, never giving in until he had 
done what he had determined to do. To be a great soldier 
is a fine thing; to be a noble, truthful, simple man is still finer. 
General Grant was both; and while the boys and girls of 
America will never forget the" battles and victories won for 
their sake, let them also never forget that it was his simplicity, 
his loyalty, his devotion, his persistence and his honor that 
made all the world respect and love Ulysses Simpson Grant 
as a great American. 





S M t^i.t 



TOMB OF U. S. GRANT, NEW YORK. 




ON THE EVE OF GETTYSBURG.— General Lee Directing the Battle. 



THE STIRRING STORY OF 

Robert E. Lee, 

General of the Confederate Armies. 




CADET LEE. 



THIS is to tell you the story of Robert 
E. Lee. Every boy and girl in 
America knows who he was — a 
great American soldier. But he was more 
than a great soldier, he was a hero, and 
this is a hero story. Is there any boy or 
girl who does not like to hear about a 
hero ? You know what a hero is, do you 
not? It is one who does great deeds in 
a grand way. Ever since the world be- 
gan there have been heroes. Some 
have been soldiers, some have been 
kings, some have been just plain, 
poor men or boys. But the 
world has liked to hear their 
stories — from David, the 
who killed Goliath the 
to George Washington, 
who delivered his land from tyranny. 
In this dear America, which is our 
native land, we have had many heroes. 

169 



giant. 



i6o ROBERT E. LEE 

They have defended us in danger, fought for us in war, cared for 
us in peace, and every boy and girl in America is told the story 
of their lives and taught to love and respect and honor them. 

It is the story of one of these brave and heroic men that I 
wish now to tell you — the story of Robert E. Lee, who fought 
long and bravely for what he believed to be the rights and the 
liberty of his fellow-men in the southern half of the United 
States of America. Listen to his story. 

Many years ago, when your grandfather's grandfather was 
helping to make the Fourth of July, a certain brave and gal- 
lant soldier fought in almost all the battles of the American 
Revolution. People called him ''Light-horse " Harry Lee. 
This was because he was the leader of a number of dashing, 
fast-riding soldiers or cavalry called "light-horse," because 
the riders were dressed and armed as lightly as possible. In 
this dress they could ride swiftly and act quickly. 

''Light-horse" Harry Lee was a splendid horseback rider, 
and his swift and daring dashes with his light-horse legion did 
a great deal toward whipping the British and making the 
American Revolution a success. General Washington thought 
very much of this brave Virginian horseman, and, when the 
war was over, wrote him a letter in which he sent him his 
"love and thanks" for what he had done in the American 
Revolution. And when the great and good Washington died, 
at his beautiful home at Mount Vernon, it was his friend the 
dashing cavalry soldier who spoke those splendid words about 
the greatest American — words which, I hope, you all know by 
heart: "Washington! first in war, first in peace and first in 
the hearts of his countrymen." 

Nearly twenty-five years after the American Revolution 
ended in success, when "Light-horse" Harry Lee had been 
Governor Lee of Virginia, and was writing a book about the 



ROBERT E. LEE 



i6i 



American Revolution, a little baby boy was born into his 
pleasant Virginia home. This baby was named Robert 
Edward Lee, and he was to grow up to become an even 
greater and nobler man than his famous father. 

Robert E. Lee was born on the nineteenth of January, 1807 





.,-5^ -A 



^•"^iiKia*- *> 



N 



.^ 



YOUNG LEE RIDING IN FRONT OF "STAFFORD," VIRGINIA, THE MANSION OF "LIGHT- 
HORSE" HARRY LEE. 

— the very year in which our great .Vmerican poets, Longfel- 
low and Whittier, were born. His father's house was at a 
beautiful country place in \'irginia, called Stafford. It was 
in Westmoreland County, on the Potomac River, the very 



1 62 ROBERT E. LEE 

county in Virginia in which George Washington was born, and 
on the banks of the same Potomac River. 

He was a good boy in everything, good in his home, good 
in his school, good in his books, and good in his ways. His 
father was not very well when Robert was a little boy and had 
to be away from home a great deal hunting for good health; 
so Robert's mother brought her boy up. 

She brought him up well and made a man of him, because 
she made him true and manly from the start. He was never 
what boys call a "sissy" just because he was mild and good, 
but he was a manly, brave, true-hearted little fellow, kind 
to all about him, always in love with his mother, always 
obeying her, attentive to his studies^ doing his duty in every 
way as a real boy should. 

When Robert was four years old his father moved from his 
country home at Stafford to the little city of Alexandria, quite 
near to Washington, the capital of the nation. There Robert 
went to School in a queer, old-fashioned, yellow house that is 
still standing in Alexandria, and is still used for a boy's 
school. Its right name was Hallowell's School, from the 
master who kept it ; but the boys who went there called it, 
because of its yellow walls, " Brimstone Castle." 

When Robert was eleven years old his father, the famous 
"Light-horse" Harry Lee of the American Revolution, died 
in Georgia, w^here he had gone for his health. The fatherless 
boy clung closer to his mother than ever, and determined to 
do everything he could to help her ; but he had such a great 
respect for his father's memory, and felt so much pride in the 
deeds his famous father had done in the cause of liberty 
and his native land, that when the time came for him to decide 
what he would do when he became a man, he declared he 
would be a soldier just as his father had been. 



ROBERT E. LEE 



163 



So he went to West Point, the famous Military Academy on 
the banks of the Hudson River, where the United States trains 
boys to lead its armies and fight its battles. 

Robert E. Lee stayed four years at West Point. He entered 



K 




E FIERCEST. 



there as a "pleb," or new boy, in 1825, when he was eighteen 
years old, and leaving it, or "graduating" as it is called, as 
Lieutenant Lee in 1829. He did finely at the famous school. 
He was what they called a model cadet — always spick and 



1 64 ROBERT E. LEE 

Span in his gray and white soldier suit, always at the head in 
his studies, always ready in his duties, in his drill, and in all 
he had to do. He never received a demerit, or bad mark, in 
all the four years that he was a cadet at West Point. Think 
of that! They said, there, that cadet Lee kept his gun so 
bright and clean that the inspecting officer could fairly see his 
face in its gleaming barrel and its polished stock. He was 
such a fine scholar at West Point that when he got through 
and graduated he stood second in his class — that is, next to 
head, you know. 

This gave him a chance to choose just where he would like 
to be in the army when he came out of West Point. He 
joined what is called the Engineer Corps, the pick of the whole 
army. 

The Engineer Corps is made up of men who look after 
building the forts and defences of our harbors, set our river 
channels straight, and protect the land from the sea as well as 
from the enemy. It is a fine position for a young officer, and 
generally gives him pleasant places to live in and agreeable 
things to do. Soldiers like it better than being sent off to 
lonely posts or to watching Indians, and it gives them a fine 
training in how to do things about forts and fighting. 

Lieutenant Lee was stationed at different places along the 
Atlantic coast. He helped plan and build Fortress Monroe, 
on beautiful Hampton Roads, in Virginia; he was stationed 
in Washington in one of the offices of the big War Depart- 
ment; he helped lay out the boundary line between the States 
of Ohio and Michigan ; he looked after the improvement of 
the harbor of St. Louis, and the changes that were made in 
the shifting channel of the mighty Mississippi River; he sup- 
erintended the building of the forts in New York harbor, and, 
when he got back from a war, which I will tell you about, he 



ROBERT E- LEE 



165 



was made Superintendent of the very place where he had gone 
to school — the Military Academy at West Point ; after that he 
had command of all the United States troops in Texas. H*? 



m 




RO GORDO. 



was Second Lieutenant in 1829, then First Lieutenant, then, 
in 1838, Captain in the regular army — so, you see, he kept 
going right on in the world, and was a great deal thought of 
in the army. The United States did not have a very big army 



1 66 ROBERT E. LEE 

in those days, but whenever there was a war it grew quickly. 
In the year 1846 there came about a war between the United 
States and its next-door neighbor, the repubHc of Mexico. 

Never mind, what it was all about, you will learn that when 
you study the history of the United States. It was a cruel 
war, as all war is cruel ; but it was a great chance for Ameri- 
cans who wished to be real soldiers to show what they were 
good for and what they could do. 

They did well. They marched into Mexico, which is just 
the other side of Texas, you know, and they fought so bravely 
that in less than two years they had conquered Mexico and 
added to the United States all the land from Texas to Califor- 
nia and the Pacific Ocean. 

In this war Robert E. Lee made a splendid soldier. He 
was so brave and gallant, so ready and reliable, that he was 
always to be found where the fighting was fiercest. And yet 
he was so gentle and kind that he always struck at the point 
in the enemy's line where they could be beaten the quickest, 
so as to finish the fight with the smallest loss of men in killed 
and wounded. 

There was one battle in Mexico in which the young engi- 
neer was almost the leader and conqueror. This was the time 
when he got the best of the Mexicans at a place called Cerro 
Gordo, high up in the mountains. The Mexican soldiers held 
the zig-zag road up the mountains. It ran between great 
cliffs and chasms, and had cannon all along so as to keep the 
Americans from coming up. But Captain Lee, the engineer, 
said: *Tf we can't march against them, we must get behind 
them. I'll try." He hunted all about for a good place, and 
at last saw a way by which a sort of path could be cut through 
the mountains and come out behind the Mexicans. He did 
this so carefully, so swiftly and so silently that before the 



ROBERT E. LEE 



167 



Mexicans knew what they were about he was right upon them 
Captain Lee led the way, and showed the men just what to do 
They lowered the cannon by ropes down the steep cliff and 




FORTIFYING RICHMOND. 

hauled them up on the opposite hill-side ; they cut, and climbed 
and jumped, and dug until they got all the men, all the horses 
and all the cannon up behind the Mexican line. Then they 



1 68 ROBERT E. LEE 

turned their guns upon the enemy, and so surprised and 
terrified them that ahiiost without a blow all that part of the 
Mexican army surrendered to the American commander, 
General Scott. 

This was one of Captain Lee's victories in Mexico. It was 
one of the kind he liked, because he had to think it out. It 
was the best kind of victory, too, for he won it without having 
to shoot down and kill many men. 

For his courage and his soldiership he was again and again 
promoted — Captain, Major, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel. He 
was on the staff of the commander, Winfield Scott, the Gen- 
eral of the American Army ; and, after the Mexican War was 
over, General Scott declared that his success in Mexico was 
largely due ''to the skill, valor and undaunted courage of 
Robert E. Lee." This is a good deal to say about one man, 
is it not, and fine, too ? 

After the Mexican war was over and all the soldiers had 
come home again. Colonel Lee was made Superintendent of 
the Military Academy at West Point, as I have already told 
you. For three years he was in charge there, directing the 
soldier boys in their studies and their drilling at that splendid 
military school on the banks of the Hudson. Then he was 
sent to join the army stationed in Texas. He was Colonel of 
a cavalry regiment, the same position that his famous father, 
*' Light-horse Harry," had held in the Army of the Republic, 
l.ater on he was placed in command of all the soldiers in what 
was called the Department of Texas. 

While he was away on a long vacation at his beautiful home 
in Virginia, called Arlington, just opposite Washington, the 
Civil War broke out. You know what that was, of course — 
the dreadful and terrible trouble between two parts of our 
dear native land — the North and the South. 



ROBERT E. LEE 



169 



It could not be settled peaceably. Men thought so differ- 
ently about things that one side would not give in to the 
other, so they just had to fight it out. 

It was a long and bitter war. Many good and brave men 





^.. 




0-' > 



HE WAVED HIS S' 



E HIS HEAD AND DASHED TO THE KkONT. 



were killed on both sides, and there was sorrow and distress 
all over the land. But when the war was over, the people of 
the United States became better friends than they had ever 
been before, and there will never be such a war agfain. 



lyo ROBERT E. LEE 

When the war broke out Colonel Robert E. Lee did not 
know just what to do. But he thought the matter over long 
and deeply, and then he said : "I cannot fight against my 
relatives, my children, my home. I have been a soldier of 
the United States, but I am a son of Virginia, and I must do 
as my State does." 

He resigned from the United States Army, giving up his 
position as Colonel, and was made Major-General of the 
forces of the State of Virginia. 

When Virginia went out of the Union — that is, when her 
people said, **We will not belong to the United States any 
longer, we will join the Confederate States," Colonel Lee said, 
"Then I must go with you." 

He was appointed military adviser to Jefferson Davis, the 
President of the newly-formed Confederate States — for so 
the States that went out of the Union called themselves. 

A year later he was made Commanding General of the 
Army of Northern Virginia, and for three years he led the 
brave Southern soldiers who fought for the Confederacy against 
the brave Northern soldiers who fought for the Union. 

What a splendid leader of those gallant Southern soldiers 
General Lee Was! He knew just where to have them march, 
just when to have them fight, just what to have them do. 

Richmond, in Virginia, was the capital of the Confederate 
States, just as Washington is the capital of the United States. 
General Lee surrounded it with forts and defended it so skil- 
fully that the Northern soldiers could not get into it, though 
they tried again and again, and whenever they tried to get 
through any of the approaches to the city, General Lee would 
march his soldiers against them and fight long and desperately. 

Boys, when they play at any good game, like a boy to be 
their laeder. You can do so much better if you have some one 



ROBERT E. LEE 



171 



to follow, some one who shows you what to do. It is just so 
with men — especially with soldiers — and General Lee was 
just such a leader. His soldiers learned to love him and 
look up to him almost as you do to your own father. They 

called him -^■:^5v^ ^ ^ *" v ~^^^""— --, 

"Marse Bob" '";^_'^#\^ "^ " - ' "^ 

and "Uncle ^^^^^^'"^ ' '•^'- -^ -^^ss. 

Bobby " — not 

to his face, of 

course, but 

\\' h e n the y 

talked togethcr 

abouthim. He 

was so kind, 

and patient, 

and gentle; he 

was always 

trying to help 

them, and 

cared for them 

so much that 

they knew he 

was their 

friend, even 

when he made 

them march 

the longest, 

and even when 




GENERAL LEE TO THE REAR. 

he made them fieht the hardest. 



But 



soldier has to fight, you know. That is why he is a soldier, 
and, although General Lee was always calm, and quiet, and 
gentle in speech and manner, he was a great soldier and 
sometimes a fierce fighter. 



172 ROBERT E. LEE 

One day, when there was a terrible battle raging, he saw his 
soldiers beaten back by the Union troops from a place he 
wished them to keep. " They must not lose it," he said, and 
he waved his sword above his head and dashed to the front to 
lead his soldiers into battle again. But his men knew that 
General Lee's life was precious ; that if he were killed there 
would be no one to lead them to victory. 

" No, no, General ! " they cried ; "Go back ! Go back, Lee, 
to the rear ! We'll take it ! " 

And when he dropped back, he saluted his soldiers for their 
love and care for him, and pointed at the Union line with his 
sword. 

" Forward," he said, and his men charging forward, thinking 
of their brave and gallant leader, won back the place from 
which they had been driven. 

Once when his own son, who was also the commander of a 
large Confederate force of cavalry (his father and grandfather 
also were generals, you know), was in danger of being sur- 
rounded by a great force of the enemy, the General, cried out 
cheerfully, "Keep your men together. General, I'll get you 
out of this," and he did. 

" General," a young officer shouted, dashing up to him, just 
as a great battle was to begin, " The Federals are adv^ancing." 
General Lee looked at him with a funny smile, enjoying the 
young officer's excitement. "Well," he said, just as cool and 
calm as you please, " I did hear firing, and I was just begin- 
ning to think it was time some of you lazy young fellows were 
coming to tell me what it was all about." 

And I suppose that made the young officer laugh right on 
the edge of that battle, and to get from his calm and cool 
General all the more courage to do his best. So, you see, 
while he was brave and serious, he could see the funny side 



ROBERT E. LEE 173 

of things, too, and did all he could to make his soldiers bright 
as well as brave, hopeful when things went wrong, calm in the 
midst of danger. This is what makes a real soldier, you know. 

The North had more men and more money than the South ; 
they kept on fighting, too, for neither side was willing to give 
in. But the North for a long time could get no soldier who 
was as great a general as Lee. 

On the third day of June, 1862, he was made General of the 
Army of Northern Virginia. That post he held through the 
war, under that name he led the Southern soldiers to battle 
and often to victory, while, by his wise way of directing his 
men, he kept the Northern troops away from Richmond for 
nearly three years. He won the battle of Malvern Hill, he 
won the Second Battle of Bull Run, he won the Battles of 
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsvill. Twice he marched his 
soldiers into the Northern lines, and at Gettysburg, in Penn- 
sylvania, in 1863, he fought a terrible three-days' battle which 
called for all the strength and all the skill of General Meade, 
the Northern leader, to turn it into a victory for the Union. 

Four generals of the Union led the armies against him in 
four great attempts to defeat and conquer him. But each time 
Lee was more than a match, and they fell back from Rich- 
mond, defeated. 

At last, in the beginning of the year 1864, General U. S. 
Grant, who had been a successful leader of the Union soldiers 
in the West, was called to the East to take command of the 
armies of the United States. Then there came a change. 

General Grant knew all about General Lee. They had both 
been in the Mexican War. He knew that to win he must do 
his very best. When some one asked him how long it would 
take him to get to Richmond, General Grant said, "Well, 
about four days, if General Lee is willing; if he isn't, well, 



174 ROBERT E. LEE 

it's going to take a good deal longer." And it did. Gen- 
eral Lee did object; he objected with guns and swords and 
men, and the soldiers of the North and the soldiers of the 
South fought many terrible battles. The fighting grew fiercer 
and hotter. Grant would never give up, but kept pressing 
on. Bit by bit the Union soldiers drew about Richmond ; 
bit by bit the Confederate soldiers gave way, as their money, 
their strength and their numbers began to fail. But they 
fought gallantly still. General Lee was watchful and deter- 
mined. His eyes saw every weak spot in the Union line ; 
he could spread out his brave but tired and hungry soldiers 
so as to make the best show, and his men loved him so well 
and followed him so willingly that he was able to keep up 
the fight longer than any other general could have done. 
Never before in all the world had so many men been brought 
face to face in battle, and dreadful battles they were, there in 
the swamps and woods and fields of Virginia, in the year 
1864. It was because both sides were brave men, and because 
brave and great generals led them, that these battles were so 
fierce, for Grant was bound to win, and Lee was bound not to 
let him. 

But when, at last, all hope of successfully defending Rich- 
mond was gone, when the brave chieftain had tried to break 
his way through the lines of Union soldiers, who now sur- 
rounded his army, and had failed, when he saw that to keep 
up the fight any longer was only a useless killing of men, a 
thing he always hated and tried to stop, then General Lee laid 
down his sword and surrendered himself and his army to his 
great foeman. General Grant, a man as gentle, as honorable 
and as kindly hearted as was he. 

It was a sad day for General Lee, when he at last deter- 
mined to give up the battle. 



ROBERT E. LEE 



175 



At first, when one of his soldiers saw how useless it would 
be to fight any longer, and told the General that he ought to 
surrender, the grand old soldier straightened himself up and 
said : " Surrender ? No , sir! I have too many good fighting 
men for that." 

But General Grant 
had more, and so, as 
I told you. General 
Lee saw this at last, 
and to stop the kill- 
ing of any more 
brave men, he gave 
it up — that is, he sur- 
rendered. It all came 
to an end at last at 
a place called Appo- 
mattox Court House, 
in Virginia. It was 
on the ninth day of 
April, 1865. The 
two Generals met 
between the lines at 
a farm-house near an 
apple orchard, and 
talked it all over. 
Both were glad to 
stop fighting ; both were proud of the heroism of their own 
men, and proud, also, of the courage of the other side, for all 
were Americans. 

General Grant said to General Lee, " If you will only 
promise for yourself and your soldiers not to fight any more 
against the United States, that is all I ask." 




ROBERT E. LEEl 



176 ROBERT E. LEE 

General Lee promised, and so the greatest civil war that 
ever was fought was ended in the kindest way just because 
both the leaders were great as well as good, and when they 
made a promise would keep it. 

Then General Lee rode back to his army and told his men 
what he had done. "The war is over," he said. 

But when his soldiers heard it, although they were hungry 
and sick and tired out axid weary with so much fighting, they 
crowded about their good General when he came back from 
arranging things with General Grant, and cried like children. 

"General, take back that word," cried one. "We'll die, 
but we won't surrender ' 

General Lee looked on the brave men lovingly 

"No, no," he said. "We have done all brave men can do. 
If I let another brave man be killed I should be a murderer. 
Go home to your wives and children ; whatever may be my 
fate, you will be safe. God bless you all. Good-by 1 " 

And then he turned and went into his tent. 

After President Lincoln was killed, there was seme fear 
that the new President would do some harm to General Lee, 
because he had been the leader of the Confederate soldiers. 
But General Grant stood up boldly and said : 

" You must not touch him. I gave him my solemn prom- 
ise that he should not be touched, and you must not let me 
break my word." 

So the great and terrible Civil War in the United States 
came to an end. Peace was in the land, and as men looked 
back and thought it all over, the one man who stood out 
before all the world as the greatest soldier in the South in all 
that long and bloody war was Robert E. Lee, the General of 
its Army, the son of brave "Light-horse " Harry Lee. When 
peace came and the soldiers had nothing to do in the way of 



ROBERT E. LEE 177 

war, General Lee went home a poor man. He had lost almost 
all he owned in those four dreadful years of war. 

But the people of his own State loved and honored him so 
much that they made him the head of one of the best schools 
in Virginia — Washington College. And as soon as it was 
known that General Lee was to be the President of the Col- 
lege, young men flocked to it so that they might say they had 
General Lee for a teacher. He was as good a lesson himself 
as anything they could learn from books. Do you know how? 
He was so fine a man that they looked up to him and tried 
to be as good and true and noble as he was. 

For five years he lived as President of Washington College. 
Then, on the twelfth day of October, 1870, he died, there 
among his students and his books, a noble old man of sixty- 
three. 

He was a great soldier and a great man. He was such a 
good man, too. He loved little children dearly and always 
saluted every boy or girl who bowed or courtesied to him as 
he rode through the streets on his splendid big horse, 
" Traveler." 

Once he came upon some boys he knew who were quarrel- 
ing. Indeed, they called each other names, and began to fight 

"Oh, General!" cried a little girl, running up to him, 
"please don't let them fight." 

The General took the boys by the shoulder. 

"Come, boys, boys!" he said, gently. "That isn't nice. 
There is some better way to settle your quarrels than with 
your fists.'" 

And how he did love little girls ! 

" Where is my little Miss Mildred ?" he would ask when he 
got home from a ride or a walk, as the night was coming on. 
"She is my light-bearer. The house is never dark if she is in it." 



178 ' ROBERT E. LEE 

Was not that a sweet and pretty way to speak about his lit- 
tle daughter ? Do you wonder that the children all loved him ? 

What made General Lee a great soldier was that he 
knew how to lead a smaller number of soldiers against a 
larger number and defeat the enemy by not letting them know 
what he was doing until he had done it. 

This is what is called strategy. It was by this that General 
Washington won many battles in the Revolution, and in the 
same way General Lee was victorious over and over again in 
the Civil War. 

But he won quite as much by his great, gentle heart as by 
his flashing sword. After the war was over people loved him 
dearly, and since his death they have loved him even more, 
because, as they look back and see how good and grand a 
man he was, they forget that he failed ; they only remember 
how hard he tried and how well he did. All through the 
South he loved so well and which loved him so much, statues, 
to-day, are being built to keep alive the memory of his life. 

To-day, North as well as South, all America honors him, 
and as the years go by the boys and girls, who, as they grow up, 
will hear his name and know his story, will think of him not 
as Lee the Confederate General, but as Robert E. Lee, the 
soldier, the gentleman, the American. 



STORY OF THE BENEVOLENT LIFE OF 

George Peabody, 

Our First Great Philanthropist 




GEORGE PEABODY. 

ica, and to know how he did 



so much 



DO my lit- 
tle friends 
under- 
stand what a 
philanthropist is? 
He is a man who 
so loves his fel- 
low man that he 
desires to help 
better the condi- 
tion of the poor 
and give them a 
chance to live 
happier and more 
useful lives. 

Would you 
like to know 
about the first 
man who became 
a great philan- 
thropist in Amer- 
for the benefit of 

179 



i8o GEORGE PEABODY 

mankind ? I will tell you, for his story is a very interesting 
one, and the reading of it maybe the means of inducing other 
boys to do likewise. Perhaps you think that this great phil- 
anthropist, who gave away millions of dollars, was rich when 
he was born, and that he was raised by kind and indulgent 
parents, who gave him everything he wanted and sent him to 
school until he was a grown man, that he might train his mind 
and heart for the great work which he did in life. This is, no 
doubt, what George Peabody deserved to have had done for 
him; but, perhaps, if it had been done, it would have made him 
selfish and spoiled him for usefulness to his fellow-men. How- 
ever this may be, we will tell you the story just as it happened, 
and leave you to draw the lessons from his life. 

In the year 1795, when George Washington was serving 
his second term as President of the United States, and Robert 
Fulton, about whom you have read in a previous chapter, 
was living in France, thinking about making the first steam- 
boat, a little baby boy was born in Danvers, Massachusetts, 
on the eighteenth day of February. They called his name 
George. His father, Mr. Peabody, was a very poor man. 
George was sent to school in Danvers, where he learned to 
read and write, and began to study arithmetic. But when he 
was eleven years of age his father became so poor that he had 
to tell George he could not go to school any longer. So he was 
apprenticed to Mr. Sylvester Proctor, who kept a country store 
at Danvers, and who agreed to teach George how to be a mer- 
chant. In this way George earned his board and clothes, and 
Mr. Proctor paid his father a few dollars a year for his services. 

George stayed in Mr. Proctor's store for five years, and by 
the end of that time, though he was only about sixteen years 
old, he had learned all that Mr. Proctor could teach him about 
the business. He knew very much about goods, was so 



GEORGE PEABODY 



i8i 



correct in keeping accounts, and so polite to those who 
came to buy, that he was considered a real good mer- 
chant, and everybody who came to the store was his friend. 
They all said, 
whenever the)- 
bought any arti- 
cle from George 
Peabody, the y 
were sure it was 
just exactly what 
he represented it 
to be. He was 
never known to 
cheat or tell a 
falsehood about 
anything that he 
sold. 

When George 
Peabody was 
sixteen years of 
age, his older 
brother, David, 
invited him to 
come to New- 
bur yport to be 
clerk in his store. 
David was con- 
siderably older 
than George, 
and, by hard work, saved money enough to start for himself a 
nice dry goods store in Newburyport; so George went to clerk 
for his brother. Newburyport was a much larger town than 




MODERN blul L::. IN LOiTON 



i82 GEORGE PEABODY 

Danvers, and the new clerk thought he was quite fortunate in 
getting the position. 

Besides, he now knew so much about selling goods that his 
brother could afford to pay him better wages, and his father 
permitted him to keep it all for himself All these things 
made George more attentive to his duties than ever. 

The other merchants soon noticed how smart he was, and 
they also noticed that he did not spend his time around the 
taverns and had none of the ugly habits common to other 
young men. In a little while he was one of the best-known 
and best-liked young men in the neighborhood. 

George was beginning to think this was the place for him 
to settle down and grow up as a merchant, and he was quite 
pleased with the prospect before him. But there was a sad 
experience awaiting him, which came very suddenly, as such 
things generally do. One morning the people were awakened 
very early by the ringing of fire-bells. George jumped out 
of bed and looked out of his window and saw the smoke ris- 
ing black and dense in the direction of his brother's store. 

He and his brother quickly hurried down to the place, where 
a great crowd of people had already gathered before them, 
and they found, indeed, that it was his brother's store wrapped 
in flames. It was but a little while until everything was burned 
up, and his poor brother was almost heartbroken at the loss 
of his many years' savings, for you know there were very few 
people in those days, indeed, if there were any in this country, 
who insured their goods and stores as they do now against 
loss by fire. 

Several of the merchants in the town offered George em- 
ployment in their stores, for they knew him to be one of the 
best clerks in the town. But, while he was waiting to decide 
the matter, he received a letter from his uncle, John Peabody, 



GEORGE PEABODY 



183 



who lived in Georgetown, District of Columbia, which is now 
a suburb of our great capital city, Washington. This uncle 
had a dry goods store, and, when he heard of the fire, he at 
once wrote George to come down and clerk for him. 




•'JOHNNY BULL," OR No. i, THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE USED. 

The thought of a trip to Washington City was quite an 

attraction to the young man of seventeen years, who had never 

been in the far South, as they then considered Washington ; 
12 



i84 GEORGE PEABODY 

in fact, he had never traveled out of the State of Massachu- 
setts. So after thanking the merchants for their kind offers 
to give him employment, and bidding his many friends good- 
by, he took a ship and sailed down the Atlantic Ocean to the 
mouth of the Potomac River, and then up the Potomac River 
to the city of Washington. 

This was a great trip, lasting several days, and George 
thought the world was a great deal larger than he had ever 
imagined it to be ; but you must not suppose he was as ignor- 
ant at this time as when he left school, a little boy of eleven 
years, for, besides learning so much about business, he had 
also been reading good books and improving his mind in 
every way he could. 

George was gladly welcomed at his uncle's house, and his 
uncle was so pleased with him, after a short trial, that he 
turned over his business entirely to him, and, furthermore, had 
it run in George's name instead of his own. Of course, the 
young man felt flattered at this, but he afterward had much 
cause to regret it; for he learned that his uncle was not only 
a very poor business man, but that he was far in debt. 

George remained with him two years, when he saw that he 
could never do any good in managing his uncle's store. Try 
as hard as he might, and no matter how well he managed, his 
uncle was always doing something which would use up all the 
money they made and kept tnem always in debt. He there- 
fore determined to resign, that is, give up his employment with 
his uncle, which he did. 

Soon after George left his uncle's store, a man by the name 
of Elisha Riggs sent for him. Mr. Riggs had just opened a 
wholesale dry goods house in Georgetown. He brought over 
silks and very fine goods from England, and also bought 
goods from Philadelphia and New York, which he sold to 



GEORGE PEABODY 185 

merchants in Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana and other 
States, some of which were very little settled. 

Mr. Riggs told George that he wanted an active, energetic 
young man who knew about goods and would be able to buy 
and sell them, and, furthermore, that he should perhaps want 
to send him occasionally into the other States to dispose of his 
goods. George liked this idea very much, for it would give 
him an opportunity to learn about other sections of the coun- 
try and other people, so he accepted Mr. Riggs' offer and 
entered, as he always did before, with all his heart and soul 
into the work. 

There were many things about the wholesale business which 
he had never learned in a retail store; but it was only a little 
while until he had mastered everything, and Mr. Riggs found 
him so bright and attentive to his duties that he made him his 
manager, when he was a little over nineteen years of age. 

George succeeded so well that Mr. Riggs was not only satis- 
fied, but, after a few month's trial, invited George to his home 
one day, and, after they had eaten dinner together, astonished 
the young man by saying he wanted to make him his partner 
in business. 

George told him how much he was pleased at being thought 
worthy of becoming a partner in the firm, but he said there 
were two things to prevent his doing so: First, he had no 
money witli which to buy an interest, and, second, he was not 
yet twenty years of age, so he could not become legally 
responsible with Mr. Riggs for the acts of the firm. 

Mr. Riggs smilingly patted the young man on the shoulder 
and said in a kind, fatherly way, " I know all that, George, but 
you see I am taking the risk, so you need have no fears as to 
the money. Besides," continued Mr. Riggs, "if you manage 
the business well, your part of the profits will soon pay for 



i86 GEORG-E PEABODY 

your interest, and by that time you will be old enough to 
become a lawful partner." 

It is no wonder, that after such kind and generous treat- 
ment, George Peabody worked both night and day to make 
the business a great success. He said, in after-life, that he 
wasn't half so anxious to make money for himself as to keep 
Mr. Riggs from feeling he had made a mistake in placing so 
much confidence in him and giving him so great an oppor- 
tunity. 

Thus, before he was twenty years of age, George Peabody 
was going to New York and Philadelphia, to buy the goods 
for the new firm. He also traveled on horseback, going into 
the wild regions of other States to look after the interests of 
the firm, which was now called by the name of "Riggs & 
Peabody," and was spreading its trade that was growing very 
rapidly in the States where it had never gone before. 

All of this, Mr. Riggs freely admitted, was due to the wise 
management and watchful care of his young partner. In 1815 
the business was found to be so extensive that it was thought 
necessary to remove it to Baltimore, where they would have 
better and quicker means of shipping their goods. 

By this time George had also noticed that very many of the 
country merchants were in the habit of letting the firm keep 
all of the ready money which they had and did not need in 
their business, and, in this w^ay, they had always on hand a 
large amount of money belonging to the merchants who 
bought from them. 

This was because the merchants felt that it was not safe to 
keep it in their country stores, and there were no banks con- 
venient for them to put it in. Hence they let Riggs & Pea- 
body keep their money. George, whose eyes were always 
open for opportunities for making money, called Mr. Riggs' 



GEORGE PEABODY 



187 



attention to this, and said they might just as well start a bank- 
ing business in connection with their business as merchants. 

Mr. Riggs agreed, and that is how George Peabody com- 
menced as a banker, just before he was twenty-one years of 
age. He had never had any experience in banking, but, as 
everybody now knows, he became one of the greatest bankers 
in the world. 

It was not long after Mr. Peabody went to Baltimore before 
he was, as he had been everywhere else, noted for his good 
judgment, his politeness and his kindness to everybody. His 
character was so good that the Legislature of Maryland made 
his bank the financial ^^__ _ _^^ 



agent of the State ; 
that is, Riggs & Pea- 
body had charge of all 
of the State's money, 
and when the State 
wanted to borrow or 
lend money, it was 
done through Mr. Pea- 
body's bank. The 
firm of Riggs & Pea- the first fri 
body grew so fast that, in 1822, they had to establish branches 
in Philadelphia and New York, so that Mr. Peabody divided 
his time between their headquarters in Baltimore and the 
branch stores in the two other cities. 

In a few years their business with England became so great 
that he had to make trips across the ocean. He went for the 
first time in 1827, and for the next ten years he crossed back 
and forth two or three times almost every year 

In 1829, Mr. Riggs, being rather an old man, concluded to 
withdraw from the firm and relieve himself from the business 




MEETING-HOUSE, BURLINGTON, N.J. 



188 GEORGE PEABODY 

cares. He therefore took out a very large sum of money, sev- 
eral times as great as the sum he put in, and still left a con- 
siderable sum belonging to him in the business. The name 
of the firm was then changed from "Riggs & Peabody" to 
"Peabody, Riggs & Co." 

In 1836, Mr. Peabody found it necessary for him to have 
a branch house in London, as he was kept so much of his time 
on the ocean, going back and forth, and he had to buy almost 
all the fine goods used in this country in London, because we 
were not then, you know, a manufacturing people. The Lon- 
don house was opened in 1836, and the next year, Mr. Pea- 
body, who was then forty-two years old, removed to London, 
and remained there most of the time for the balance of his 
life, though he was in America many times, and always claimed 
America as his home. 

It was lucky for the American people that Mr. Peabody did 
go to London to live, because this same year, 1837, there 
came a great financial panic. That means the merchants were 
broken up, the banks were failing, and the people were unable 
to pay their debts ; and tlie English people who had sold to 
the merchants in this country became very much alarmed, and 
got their money out of the country anyway they could, no 
matter how many people it caused to fail/ 

Mr. Peabody by this time had made many acquaintances 
among the leading business men and bankers in London, and 
they invited him into the great London bank, known as the 
Bank of England, which is still the largest banking house in 
the world, and asked him a great many questions about Amer- 
ica. He explained everything to them in such a manner that 
they had more confidence in our people, and hundreds of 
merchants were saved from failure by Mr. Peabody' s influence. 
In the meantime the business of Peabody, Riggs & Co, grew 



GEORGE PEABODY 



189 



larger than ever. They now had many ships carrying their 
goo'ds from England to America, and bringing back such 
American goods as sold best in England. George Peabody 
seemed to know just what and when to buy for both countries, 
and the firm grew rich very fast. Any merchant can get rich 
if he knows just what to buy and when to buy it, and when 




THE BULLOCK-HOE PERFECTING PRESS. 

and where to sell. Good judgment is worth more than money 
m business, and this is what Mr. Peabody had. 

The merchants on both sides of the Atlantic began to leave 
large sums of money in Mr. Peabody's hands, just as the 
country merchants had left it in his hands when he was in 
Baltimore. Finally, so much of this money accumulated, and 
he had so much banking to do, that his time was almost 
entirely taken up with this work. 



I90 GEORGE PEABODY 

So, in 1843, Mr. Peabody concluded to give his time to this 
branch of the business, and he withdrew from the old firm and 
started a new one under the name of ** George Peabody & 
Co.," which did a banking and brokerage business, and his 
dealings were almost entirely with Americans and in Ameri- 
can securities. 

Mr. Peabody was very proud of his country and never let 
a chance pass to tell people that he was an American. In his 
great banking-house, his associates and many of his clerks 
were Americans. He represented his house as an American 
banking-house in London, and he had a reading-room in the 
building, and the tables contained all the best American 
magazines and newspapers. 

Every Fourth of July, Mr. Peabody gave a celebration at 
one of the public houses, to w^hich he invited all the promi- 
nent Americans in London, as well as many of his English 
friends, and they enjoyed their Independence Day just as if 
they had been in their native country. 

Another thing to show how patriotic Mr. Peabody was hap- 
pened in 1 85 1. That year England had a great exhibition, 
something like our Centennial or World's Fair, though not so 
large, to which all the nations of the earth were invited, to 
send specimens of their workmanship, inventions, etc. For 
some reason, the Congress of the United States failed to vote 
any money to make an exhibition for our country. This 
grieved Mr. Peabody very much, and he gave fifteen thousand 
dollars out of his own pocket to prepare and fit up a space in 
the exhibition for Americans who wanted to show their inven- 
tions. Was not that patriotic? 

Among other things that were shown there was the great 
McCormick reaper, which had never before been seen in Eng- 
land. Another was the celebrated Colt's revolver. Another 



GEORGE PEABODY 191 

was a lock which burglars could not pick, made by an Ameri- 
can by the name of Hobbs. Another was Hoe's wonderful 
printing press, the greatest then in the world, and the greatest 
even now. He also showed Benjamin West's fine paintings, 
which, though they were done in London, he claimed belonged 
to us because Mr. West was an American. Another thing 
which attracted great attention was a celebrated piece of sculp- 
ture, known as Powers' Greek Slave, also made by an Amer- 
ican ; and many other things which beat the English people 
so far that they had much more respect for America after that. 
The great newspapers of London praised Mr. Peabody and 
his country, and said the English people got more benefit from 
the things shown by the United States than from those from 
any other country. 

You say this was noble and patriotic in Mr. Peabody. So 
it was, but, remember, all great men love their countries. It 
is only the mean and cowardly man who does not love his 
native land. Whenever you see a person who will not stand 
up for his own country, he is like a boy who maltreats his 
mother, sure to be mean and cowardly. 

Now, let me tell you some of the habits of this very great 
and rich man — for he was now worth many millions of dollars. 
In personal appearance he was very much like many other 
men. His face was rather pale and thoughtful; but his body 
was strong, because he had been used to simple living all his 
life. He was of about medium height and very muscular, 
but not fat and chubby, like Doctor Franklin. 

He disliked all kinds of display, so he was simple in his 
dress, though always neat as a pin. He wore no jewelry 
except a fine gold watch, and that was fastened with a black 
silk cord. He thought it was foppish to wear the big dang- 
ling chains that were common in those days. 



192 GEORGE PEABODY 

Mr. Peabody never married. We do not know why, but 
some of our greatest and best men have lived all their lives 
as bachelors. Among them were Washington Irving, the 
great American novelist, and John Greenleaf Whittier, the 
noble Quaker poet, whom everybody loved. It was natural 
for Mr. Peabody to be saving. When a poor boy, he had to 
count his pennies very carefully before he spent them. This 
habit clung to him through life, and he never wasted anything. 
He was not given to the extravagant use of tobacco or intoxi- 
cating liquors. Very many men in London, who did not own 
one tenth as much as he, spent ten times as much on them- 
selves. He was often seen making his dinner on a mutton- 
chop and a cup of tea or a glass of milk, just because he knew 
this was better for his health than more expensive diet. 

I have already told you George Peabody was rigidly honest, 
and he wanted everybody else to be honest too. On one occa- 
sion, when he rode on an English railway, the conductor 
charged him a shilling too much for his fare. He paid the 
shilling, looked very coldly at the man, and asked him his 
name and address. The conductor pretended to be offended 
at this, but that made no difference to Mr. Peabody. When 
he got off the train, he went straight to the directors of the 
railroad and told them what the conductor had done, and had 
him discharged. Mr. Peabody said he did not mind paying the 
shilling himself, because he could afford to do it; but the man 
was, no doubt, cheating many travelers just as he had done him, 
and others could not afford to be robbed of their money. Now, 
if any of my little readers think Mr. Peabody did wrong in 
this, they are mistaken. He did exactly right. Perhaps the 
conductor thought he was mean and spiteful for having him 
discharged, but I will prove to you that he was, on the con- 
trary, the most liberal man in the world. 



GEORGE PEABODY 



[93 



As far back as 1835, Mr. Pcabody gave to the State of Mary- 
land the sum of two hundred thousand dollars, for which the 
Legislature sent him a vote of thanks. This was his first large 
In 1852, w^hen Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the great Arctic 
xplorer, of whom you have, no doubt, heard, was sent into the 
cold regions of the North to hunt for Sir John Franklin, Mr. 



gift 




MEMORIAL HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE. 
Harvard College received the gift of $150,000 from George Peabody. 

Peabody gave ten thousand dollars to help in this great under- 
taking. The same year he concluded to build a library and 
to stock it with books in his old home down in Danvers, Mas- 
sachusetts. So he gave thirty thousand dollars to build this 
library, in order that the people and the boys and girls of his 
old town might have better opportunities than he had when a 
boy for studying and reading good books. Later on in his 



194 GEORGE PEABODY 

life he gave one hundred and seventy thousand dollars more, 
making two hundred thousand dollars in all to the Peabody 
Institute at Danvers. 

Afterwards he gave fifty thousand dollars to build another 
such institution in North Danvers. You know the Bible tells 
us that charity begins at home, so the first gift that Mr. Pea- 
body made was to the State of Maryland, which had been his 
home when he began his career as a great merchant, and now 
he had given two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in all to 
the little city of Danvers, where he was born. 

In 1857 Mr. Peabody visited the United States again, and 
spent a while in his home city, Baltimore, Maryland. This 
he loved next to Danvers, the town where he was born. So 
he gave to Baltimore three hundred thousand dollars to build 
a great library and institution of learning. They named it 
the Peabody Institute, as had been done in Danvers. After- 
wards, Mr. Peabody saw that the great city of Baltimore 
needed to have a larger institution than the one they had 
already built, and he gave them seven hundred thousand dol- 
lars more to make it large enough and fit it up in the very 
best manner. He then gave twenty-five thousand dollars to 
Phillip's Academy in Massachusetts, and twenty-five thousand 
dollars to Kenyon College. 

Then Mr. Peabody went back to England, after having done 
what he thought he ought to do for his native land at that 
time ; he turned his attention to the poor people in London. 
He went around among the tenement-houses and saw how 
sometimes a large family lived in one miserable little hot room 
where the air could hardly get in. He noticed what poor food 
they ate, and how pale and sickly the children looked, and his 
great heart was moved with pity for them. So he went out 
into different parts of the city where it was cool and airy and 



GEORGE PEABODY 



195 



he built great rows of comfortable houses and gave three mil- 
lions of dollars. You may understand how much this was if 
you remember it takes ten hundred thousand dollars to make 
a million. These houses that Mr. Peabody built for the poor 
people furnished comfortable homes to over twenty thousand 
persons ; and the poor people in London bless his name above 
all other good men who have helped them in their distress. 
Many of them do not even know but that he was an English- 
man ; but everyone know^s the name of George Peabody, and 
they love him as, perhaps, they love no other man. 

Queen Victoria, the great Queen of England, was so thank- 
ful to Mr. Peabody for his rich gift that she sent him a beauti- 
ful letter, and had her portrait painted by the finest artist she 
could get and sent it to Mr. Peabody as a gift. This portrait 
was so large and the frame so handsome that it cost the Queen 
forty thousand dollars. It w^as the most expensive portrait 
she ever gave to anyone. 

About this time the great Civil War in the United States 
was over, and Mr. Peabody made another visit to this country. 
He was very sorry that the Southern people and the Northern 
people had been at war with each other, for he was born in 
the North, but he had lived and done much of his business 
in the South. He therefore loved the people of both sections 
of the country; and this great and bloody war, which lasted 
four long years, had killed off thousands upon thousands of 
the best men from both the North and the South. 

The first thing Mr. Peabody did, when he came over, was 
to see how the colleges were doing, and whether they were 
able to educate the people. He gave one hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars to Harvard College, and one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars to Yale College, the two greatest col- 
leges in the country. Then he gave two hundred thousand 



196 GEORGE PEABODY 

dollars to hospitals and soldiers' homes and other charitable 
objects. For this generous liberality the United States Con- 
gress voted that the thanks of the whole nation should be 
extended to him, and they also had a medal made of pure gold 
and presented to him from the United States Government. 

Mr. Peabody now visited the South, and he saw how desti- 
tute the people were. The rich farms had almost all their 
fences torn down, and many of the houses had been burned. 
Churches and schoolhouses were going to rack. This is not 
strange, for it was in that section of the country that the fierce 
fighting was carried on, and the South had to feed both the 
Southern and the Northern armies nearly all the time during 
these four long years. The w^hole country looked desolate, 
and the people were downhearted. 

Besides this, there were three or four millions of black peo- 
ple who were now made free, but not one in a hundred of 
them even knew their A B C's. Mr. Peabody said that while 
they were slaves, it was perhaps very well that they should not 
be educated; but now they had become free they must be 
educated, or the Government some day might be destroyed 
through their ignorance. So he gave the great sum of three 
million five hundred thousand dollars to help along the cause 
of education in the Southern States. 

This was his greatest and grandest gift, and did more good 
perhaps than any other. Every Southern State received its 
portion of this money, and the wise and noble Southern man, 
Doctor J. L. M. Curry, President of a college in Richmond, 
Virginia, was made agent of this fund. It was invested wisely 
so it would bring continual interest. After a while, the great 
college, known as the Peabody Normal College, was estab- 
lished out of this money in connection with the University of 
Nashville, Tennessee. 



GEORGE PEABODY 



197 




Every Southern State was entitled to send as many of its 
young men and young women as wanted to become teachers 
to this college to be educated free. They not only had their 
tuition given them free, but enough money was allowed every 
student to 
pay his board 
and expen- 
ses until he 
could gra- 
duate as a 
teacher from 
this college. 
They then 
went back 
home to 
their States, 
where they 
obligated 
themselves 
to teach. 
Thousands 
of the best 
teachers now 
in the South 
at the head 
of its col- 
leges and 
its public 
schools were 







CHAPEL OF YALE COLLEGE. 
The sum of $150,000 was given this College by Mr. Peabody. 



educated by Mr. George Peabody at this great Normal College. 

Besides this, in all the States the ''Peabody Fund," as it 

is called, is used to help along the cause of education. There 



198 GEORGE PEABODY 

are Peabody Institutes all over the land, and thousands upon 
thousands are being educated at the expense of this great- 
hearted rich man, who was so poor when he was a boy that he 
had to quit school and go to work when only eleven years old. 

Mr. Peabody thought at this time of making his home in 
America, but the hard work he had done all his life had injured 
his health, and he found he could not live as comfortably in 
this climate as he could in England, where it does not become 
so warm in the summer, so he returned to England. 

The Queen, when she heard of the great things he had dorte 
for the suffering of his own land, offered to make him a baron, 
but he declined, saying he was only a simple citizen. She 
then offered to make him a member of the Order of Bath and 
bestow upon him the grand cross, which was the highest honor 
she could think of, but Mr. Peabody again declined. 

The Queen then asked him what gift he would accept from 
her, for she wanted to express her regard in some way. Mr. 
Peabody said he w^ould like to have a simple letter from the 
Queen, written with her own hand, which he wanted to carry 
across the ocean to put in a frame and hang up where the 
people would sometimes come and think of him. He wanted 
them to see this letter that they might know he had the good- 
will and friendship of the Queen. 

It was in answer to this request that the Queen wrote him 
the letter and sent him the fine portrait of herself, which we 
have already told you about. If you ever go to the Peabody 
Institute at Danvers, you will see the Queen's letter and this 
forty-thousand-dollar portrait of the Queen hanging side by 
side in the Institute. They were placed there by Mr. Peabody 
the next time he came to America. 

In 1868 Mr. Peabody endowed an art school in Rome, Italy, 
and in 1869 he made his last visit to his beloved America. 



GEORGE PEABODY 



199 



On this visit he gave one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
to establish a public museum at Salem, Massachusetts, and to 
several other charitable objects one hundred and sixty-five 
thousand dollars. 

Then he went 
back to England, 
and what do you 
suppose he found 
when he went out 
in London? Why, 
in one of the finest 
parts of the city 
there stood a beau- 
tiful bronze statue 
of George Peabody. 
During his absence 
in America, it had 
been made by his 
English friends; 
and the Prince of 
Wales, the son of 
the Queen, (now 
King Edward VII.) 
had unveiled it in 
the presence of the 
people, and made 
a speech, praising the great philanthropist and calling 
George Peabody the best man that ever lived. 

A few weeks after this Mr. Peabody died in London, on the 
twelfth day of November, 1869, when he \\as nearly seventy- 
five years of age. All the world mourned the loss of this 
good man. The great people of England turned out to his 

13 




THE PRINCE OF WALES 
At the time when he unveiled the statue to George Peabody. 



200 GEORGE PEABODY 

funeral. The Queen had him buried in Westminster Abbey, 
the place where only the noted people of England lie buried. 
This was the first time that a private citizen had ever been 
buried in Westminster Abbey ; and although the Queen and 
the English people would have been pleased to keep him 
there, it was not to be so. 

Mr. Peabody told them before he died that he wanted to be 
buried by the side of his old mother in America. So after 
his body had been kept in Westminster Abbey for a while, 
the Monarch, the finest and fastest warship in the British 
Navy, brought Mr. Peabody's remains across the Atlantic 
Ocean. Before coming to land. Admiral Farragut, who com- 
manded the Union warships in the great war between the 
North and South, took the American Squadron and went out 
to meet the MoiiarcJi. The casket containing Mr. Peabody's 
remains was transferred from the Monaixh to the Flagship 
of the American Squadron, and they took him back to Dan- 
vers, which he left nearly fifty-nine years before when a poor 
boy of sixteen, and laid him in a grave beside his dear old 
mother. 

Then the people of the town got up a great petition, which 
almost everybody signed, requesting the Legislature of Massa- 
chusetts to change the name of the town from Danvers to 
Peabody, which was done. Therefore, if you look on your 
map now, you will find the name Peabody instead of Danvers. 

Mr. Gladstone, the great and noble statesman of England, 
said: 'Tt was George Peabody who taught the world how a 
man might be the master of his fortune, not its slave." We 
point our young friends to the life of George Peabody as a 
noble model for all those who expect to be merchants and 
business men. 



THE MARVELOUS GENIUS OF 

Thomas A. Edison, 

The Greatest Inventor of the World. 



"I 




" I uever did anything worth doing by accident, nor ( 
inventions come by accident." ,— Thomas A . £dison. 



NEVER did any- 
thing worth doing 
by accident, nor 
did any of my in- 
ventions come by acci- 
dent." These are the im- 

Dressive words of one of 

J. 

the most interesting men 
whose lives have ever 
been told for boys and 
girls. He simply tells us 
that his success was not 
accidental, as, however 
great he has become, it 
has been through hard 
work and great care, and 
by doing everything in 
the best way possible as 
it came along. 

After Benjamin Frank- 
lin showed how to catch 

201 



202 THOMAS A. EDISON 

lightning in 1752, and run it down a lightning rod into the 
ground, another man by the name of Samuel F. B. Morse 
found out how to make this same electricity carry messages 
along a wire, and he invented the telegraph in 1835 — nearly 
one hundred years after Benjamin Franklin discovered that 
lightning and electricity were the same. 

Samuel Morse was a great man, but we are to tell you of 
one much greater than he, who so improved the telegraph that 
it w^ould do ten times as fast work as Morse's machine. His 
name is Thomas Alva Edison, and he is called the Wizard of 
Meiilo Park. 

Do you know what a wizard is? It is one that can do very 
wonderful things that people cannot understand. Did you 
ever hear of Aladdin in the fable, who is said to have pos- 
sessed a wonderful lamp which he could rub, and whatever he 
wished for would come? Well, that is only a fable; but 
Thomas A. Edison has done things that have made people 
wonder almost as much as at Aladdin and his lamp. It is the 
true story of his wonderful life that we are going to tell you. 

Thomas A. Edison, besides his many wonderful discoveries 
in electricity, has made some of the most useful machines for 
the benefit of mankind, and he has made more inventions than 
any other man. He has now more than two hundred and 
fifty patents. No other man has ever secured half so many. 

We can, of course, tell you of only a few of his wonderful 
inventions. But, first, let us give you the story of his inter- 
esting boyhood. 

Thomas Alva Edison was born February 1 1, 1847, in Milan, 
Erie County, Ohio. In olden times his father's people were 
Hollanders and lived in Holland along the Zuyder Zee, which 
you know is an arm of the North Sea, running into the land. 
Many of them were, by trade, millers. His great-grandfather 



THOMAS A. EDISON 203 

was born in Amsterdam, and when he was a young man moved 
to America, and during the Revolutionary War was a banker 
in the city of New York. He died at the great age of one 
hundred and two years. 

His mother's name was Nancy Elliot, whose parents were 
Scotch people. In her girlhood she lived in Canada and was 




THE BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS A. EDISOK, O. 

educated there for a teacher, and it was there that Samuel 
Edison, Thomas' father, met and married her. So you see 
Thomas Edison is part Dutchman and part Scotchman, and 
this perhaps, accounts for his wonderful ability to work so long 
and so well and take so little rest. 

The Hollanders are very strong people, and are able to do 
more work than any other nation. It was from them that 



204 THOMAS A. EDISON 

Thomas Edison received his wonderful power of endurance. 
For, as you will see, he sometimes worked days without sleep. 
The Scotch people, on the other hand, are very determined. 
They are close students, and, as a rule, have quick and keen 
minds, and w^ant to look into and understand things. 

Thomas Edison showed, when he was a little boy, that he 
w^as both a Dutchman and a Scotchman in strength of body 
and his bright and strong mind. His mother had been a 
teacher, and it was she who gave this promising boy his early 
instruction. It is said that only two months of his life did 
Edison attend school. 

Nevertheless, when ten years old, he was so bright that he 
could read Gibbon's '' History of the Rise and Fall of the 
Roman Empire," Burton's dry book called the "Anatomy of 
Melancholy," and David Hume's "History of England." He 
was also at that age studying the "Dictionary of Sciences" 
and the "Penny Encyclopedia." When twelve years of age, 
he even read one of the hardest books in the world, Newton's 
"Principia," though he says he did not understand it. 

You will not find one great man in a hundred who has had 
several years of schooling, who has read the above learned 
but hard and dry books. This show^s you how anxious young 
Edison w^as to learn, and whenever a boy wants to learn, he 
will learn, whether he goes to school or not. Whenever a 
boy does not want to learn, no matter how much schooling 
you give him, it is apt to do him very little good. 

Mr. Samuel Edison, the father of Thomas, had a very com- 
fortable but plain home, which you will see in the picture, in 
Milan, w^here Thomas was born, but in 1854, wdien Thomas 
was only seven years old, his father lost all his little savings 
and had to move out of this house and begin living anew, in 
the town of Port Huron, Michigan. Edison's mother taught 



THOMAS A. EDISON 205 

him and the other children at home; but instead of having to 
urge Tom on as most boys, she had to hold him back and 
take his books away from him. He was so anxious to learn 
that he would spend all his time reading if she would let him. 
Often she read to the children, after they had learned their 
lessons, much to Tom's delieht. 

You will laugh when I tell you this funny thing that little 
Tom did one day when 
about five years old. 
His sister tells it for 

the truth; but it is said 

to plague Mr. Edison 

now if anyone speaks 

of it. There was an 

old goose sitting on a 

nest full of eggs. Tom 

watched her day after 

day. One morning he 

found the shells broken, 

and, toddling about the 

nest, were several little 

goslings in a greenish- 
go 1 d e n down. H e 

wanted to know how 

-.1 1 /- 1 , THOMAS A. EDISON, WHEN PUBLISHER OF THE "GRAND 

It nappenecl, tor he al- trunk herald.- 15 years old. 

ways wanted an explanation for everything. His father told 
him that the warmth from the old goose's body hatched the 
goslings out of the eggs. Next day they missed Tom, and, 
after hunting a long time, found him curled up in a barn on a 
nest full of eggs, trying to hatch them out with the warmth of 
his body. When Thomas was twelve years of age he got a 
position on the railroad as a newsboy. That means one who 




2o6 THOMAS A. EDISON 

sells books and papers, and candy and pencils, etc., on the 
trains as they pass back and forth through the country. He 
liked this position very much, because it gave him a chance 
to see and read so many new books. As soon as he had car- 
ried his books and papers through the train and sold what the 
people wanted, he would settle himself down in a corner and 
spend every spare moment in reading. 

Strange to say, instead of reading the trashy books of wild 
tales, such as spoil boys' minds, he spent his time over maga- 
zines which described new inventions, and in reading books 
that taught him something. Among other books he always 
carried with him a book of chemistry, and poured over it an 
hour or two almost every day, though he could not pronounce 
many of the hard names and did not know what a large part 
of it meant. 

By saving his money he was soon able to buy a lot of 
chemicals, and he set up a little experimenting laboratory in 
the baggage-car, and when he read about the strange things 
that would happen if you put two different kinds of chemicals 
together, he would, according to the directions in his book, 
put them together and see what they would do. This amused 
the baggageman, and he encouraged Tom to learn. 

But the boy was not content with doing just what the book 
told him. He was always putting chemicals together 
that the book did not say anything about, to see what they 
would do ; and about this he was always cautioned to be care- 
ful. One end of Edison's run as newsagent was at the city 
of Detroit, Michigan. He had to lay over there sometimes 
for a day, and he spent almost every other night in that city. 
Very soon he began to go to the great Detroit Free Library. 
Now he had an idea that all the smart men in the world had 
read all the books that had been printed, and if he expected 



THOMAS A. EDISON 207 

to be a well-read man he should have to do likewise. He 
looked at the great shelves of books, rising one above another 
and running the whole length of the wall, and he thought it 
was a great undertaking to read all these books, but he deter- 
mined to do it. He concluded that the way to read that library 
through was to begin at one end of the shelf and read along 
to the other end of it; then take another shelf and read to the 
end of it, and so on until he had read all the rows of books. 

Every day and every night when he was in Detroit, he spent 
at the library, and, after several months, they noticed that he 
was going to the same shelf and taking the books, one after 
another, just as he came to them, no matter what they were 
about. One day the librarian questioned him why he was 
doing that. He said he had started in to read the library 
through ; and by that time he had actually finished all the 
books for about fifteen feet along one of the shelves. 

This seems very funny, but it goes to show how determined 
the boy was, and when he once set himself to do a task he 
was very apt to carry it through. Of course, as soon as he 
was shown his mistake, he gave up this way of reading and 
took the advice of those who knew how to direct him. 

In the meantime, Edison had been so faithful in his duties 
as a newsboy that he had made and saved quite a little sum 
of money, besides what he gave his parents ; and, when he was 
fourteen years old, he got the news company to give him the 
exclusive right to sell papers over a certain division of the 
railroad between Detroit and Port Huron, and he hired four 
assistants to help him. 

Let me now tell you a trick Edison did in 1862, when he 
was about fifteen years old. By a trick, I mean a shrewd and 
smart thing which injured nobody, but which brought Edison 
lots of profit. At that time the war between the North and 



2o8 THOMAS A. EDISON 

South was raging, and the press every day was full of the 
exciting accounts of the movements of the soldiers. 

When the great fight took place at Pittsburg Landing, Ten- 
nessee, and nearly twenty-five thousand men were killed and 
wounded, Edison made an agreement with the telegraph 
operators along the line which he ran from Detroit, offering 
to give them a daily paper and two or three monthly maga- 
zines, if they would put up notices on their bulletin boards 
about the fight and say that a full account of it would be found 
in the Detroit Free Press. 

By his winning ways, he also got the news telegraphed all 
along the lines (for by this time he had begun to study tele- 
graphy himself by watching the operators, and had made 
friends of most all of them). He then went to the editor of 
the Detroit Free Press, Mr. William F. Story, and persuaded 
him to let him have a thousand extra copies of the Free Press, 
to be paid for when he should return, for he did not have 
enough money then to pay for them. 

At the first station Utica, Edison said he had been accus- 
tomed to sell two papers at five cents each. This time a great 
crowd was waiting at the station and he sold forty papers. At 
the next station he found a still larger crowd waiting and 
clamoring for the news of the battle at Pittsburg Landing, so 
he raised the price of the paper to ten cents and sold one hun- 
dred and fifty, where he had before sold only one dozen papers. 

When he came to Port Huron, the town being a mile from 
the station, he shouldered a bundle of papers and started for 
the town. About half-way there he met a great crowd hurry- 
ing toward the station, and, knowing they were after his papers, 
he stopped in front of a church where they were holding a 
prayer-meeting and raised the price of his papers to twenty- 
five cents. In a few minutes the prayer-meeting was adjourned, 



THOMAS A. KDISON 



everybody was reading his paper, and he had his pockets 
loaded vv.th sdver and not a paper left. Edison now had 
considerable njoney of his own, and he went back to the city 

of Detroit and walked ■, - ^ 

in with a smiling face 
to pay for his papers , 
at two and one-half | 
cents each, Avhich he ' 
had sold at an average 
of twenty cents each. ' 
The editor laughed, 
patted the boy on the 

back and complimented ^^^;;Z.:::.:::;:^^:^;;;::;;;^ 
him on his business tact and shrewdness. In the meantime 
Edison had often visited the type-setting rooms of the S 
Press and other papers, and at odd times had learned to 2 
type. It now occurred to him that he might, if he had the 
type, start a little paper of his own. This^■d a he playfl 
announced to the editor of the De^, Free Press. xSe ed^^ 

; tor, to encourage him, 

took him down into the 

j type-room and showed 

r; i him a lot of old type 

■ which they had ceased 

to use, since they had 

\ boug-ht new ones, and 

i sold it to him for a 

'^ -^^-^^^.r::^,,^,^^^^ ,,,r' ; very small price. Edi- 

EDISON AS A YOUNG TELEGRAPH OPERATOR SOn at OUCC fitted IIH P 

pnntmg-office in the baggage-car, where he had his £mTcaI 
laboratory n. one corner, and his friend, the baggate-m" er 
and bs newsboy helpers with himself set the t>f elide up 



2IO THOMAS A. EDISON 

and printed the first edition of a small paper which they called 
the Grand Trunk Herald. It gave the news of the railroad 
men and little items of general news. If a man was discharged, 
or a new man put to work, or an accident occurred on the road, 
or the time of the running of the trains was changed, or any- 
thing interesting to the railroad men happened, it was sure to 
be in the Grand Trunk Herald, and in a little while the boy 
had several hundred regular subscribers. 

But the Grand Trunk Herald came to a sad end, and with 
it Edison came to grief. As we told you before, Edison was 
always experimenting with dangerous chemicals. One day 
he dropped a bottle of acid, which set the car on fire and came 
near burning up the train. When the fire was at last put out, 
the baggageman was so angry that he kicked Edison's labora- 
tory out of the door, and threw out all his type and little 
printing press. Then he boxed Edison's face so hard that he 
made him deaf on one side, and he never could hear again 
on that side. Poor Edison was then put off the train, and the 
Grand Trunk Herald was published no more. 

But you can't keep a boy with pluck in him down. Edison 
was determined to have a newspaper, and he soon arranged 
with a printer-boy, known as the "devil," in a Port Huron 
newspaper office to join him, and they started a paper, which 
was called the Paul Pry. The boy from the printing office 
knew how to print the paper, and he also knew how to write 
better than Edison, so the Paid Pry was a very much better 
paper than the Grand Trunk Herald had been. 

It ran along nicely and had a good many subscribers, but, 
unfortunately, Edison and his friend were so full of fun that 
they began to tell unpleasant jokes about different prominent 
people, and that is what brought their paper to an end. VOne 
day a subscriber, who had been made the butt of one of their 



THOMAS A. EDISON 211 

jokes, met Edison down by the river St. Clair, and when Edi- 
son refused to apologize for what he had printed in the paper, 
he grew so angry that he picked the young editor up, boxed 
his ears and threw him into the river. After this the Paul Pry 
was not printed any more. 

I omitted to tell you before that after Edison was thrown 
out of the car by the baggageman, he took his chemical appar- 
atus to the cellar of his father's house at Port Huron. Before 
this, Thomas had learned considerably by watching the opera- 
tors send telegrams, by asking them questions, and by studying 
as much as he could during his short stay in the office. I 
must tell you also that during Edison's four years as news- 
agent, from the time he was twelve until he was sixteen years 
old, he earned and gave his parents about five hundred dollars 
every year. So by the time he was sixteen years old he had 
paid his parents about two thousand dollars in cash, besides 
almost supporting himself. 

Now that he had set himself up permanently in his father's 
cellar, he concluded to add telegraphing to his chemical studies. 
So he bought a book which proposed to teach him something 
about it, and he studied diligently night and day until he had 
gone through it, and thought he understood at least enough 
about it to make a trial. 

Not far away there lived a boy near his own age, by the 
name of James Ward, who was also of an inquiring mind, 
and the two boys concluded to set up a telegraph line between 
their homes. At a hardware store they found wire used to 
hold stovepipes in place. This, they said, would do for the 
wire. They had observed that the wires of a telegraph were 
run around glass to keep the electricity from escaping. They 
had none of these glass pieces, so they took old bottles and 
wound the wire around them. Next they secured some old 



212 THOMAS A. EDISON 

magnets and got a piece of brass, which they finally fashioned 
into a key board. 

Now their line was ready, but they needed the electricity. 
What should they do to make a current, so they could tele- 
graph? The way they undertook to do it was very funny. 
Edison had heard that if you rub a cat's back in the night, you 
could see sparks of electricity flying from its fur. 

So Edison secured two cats, attached the wire to their legs, 
and he and his companion, seizing them by their necks, began 
vigorously to rub their backs. Of course, the cats objected, 
and after much rubbing and anxious watching the boys failed 
to get their line to work. 

No doubt, if the cats could talk, they would have told the 
boys they were glad of it. This shows how original Mr. Edi- 
son is, and, while nothing came from rubbing the cats' backs, 
many of his other efforts made in just such an original way 
have turned out for the benefit of the world. 

About two months after this sad disappointment, there came 
a happy day for Thomas Edison. His mind had now become 
given up to the study of electricity, and he wanted to be a 
telegraph operator. One day he was standing on the platform 
at the station thinking over many great things that telegraph- 
ing might do and how much he longed to study it. 

He looked up the railroad and saw the express locomotive 
coming round the curve. Right in the middle of the track, 
between him and the dashing engine, with its flashing head- 
light, he saw the little three-year-old son of the stationmaster. 
At the peril of his own life, he dashed in, and, seizing the lit- 
tle one in his arms, fairly threw himself off the track, with the 
wheels of the great locomotive almost touching his feet. 

The stationmaster was overjoyed and offered to teach Edi- 
son to be a telegraph operator. This kind offer Edison 



THOMAS A. EDISON 



213 



accepted, and in five months he was so proficient that he 
got a position in a Port Huron telegraph office at twenty-five 
dollars per month. 

He was now sixteen years of age, and he learned so fast that 
he was soon the best operator on the line. The newspapers 
were at that time anxious to get some important news from 
Congress, correctly and quickly, and they offered the man in 

charge of the office sixty dollars 
>/> ^^ S^^ ^^ ^^^ them. The man- 
f ''^ ager selected the boy Edison 







SHOP IN WHICH THE FIRST MORSE INSTRUMENT WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR 
EXHIBITION BEFORE CONGRESS. 

to do the work, and promised him twenty dollars out of the 
sixty if he got it. Edison did the work easily and well, and 
the sixty dollars were paid over to the manager ; but the mean 
man refused to gWQ Edison the twenty dollars he had promised 
him. This dishonorable act made the boy so angry that he 
left that office and went to Canada, where he was soon known 
as one of the most expert operators in the Dominion. 



214 THOMAS A. EDISON 

While Edison was in Canada, he was required every half- 
hour to let the superintendent know he was at his post by 
telegraphing the word *'six." This he thought was unneces- 
sary, so he invented a little machine that simply by a touch 
from the watchman would telegraph the little word "six" for 
him. This gave him an opportunity to spend his time study- 
ing at his books, but it also got him into very serious trouble ; 
for once some orders came to stop a train that was coming. 
Edison was at his books and did not hear the order. When 
he did see the danger, he undertook to run on ahead and give 
warning to stop the train, and he fell into a hole and almost 
killed himself 

Fortunately, the engineers stopped the two trains before 
they came together. The manager called Edison to him 
and told him what a serious thing he had done, and said he 
would have him sent to the penitentiary for five years. This 
frightened the poor boy almost out of his wits ; but just at 
this moment two dandy Englishmen came in, and the super- 
intendent stopped to talk to them. 

While he was thus engaged, Edison slipped out and ran to 
a train which was just ready to start. He knew the conduc- 
tor, and went aboard and told him he was going to Sarnia, 
and would like him to let him pass. The conductor consented, 
and when the superintendent looked around for the boy, Edi- 
son was gone, he knew not where. 

Now Sarnia is in Canada, just across the river from Port 
Huron, Edison's home, and you may believe he was in a hurry 
when he got there to cross over the line and get into the Uni- 
ted States, where they could not get him. 

That winter he stayed at home in Port Huron. One day 
when they could not telegraph to Sarnia across the river — 
the ice having broken the wires — it was very important that 



THOMAS A. EDISON 



215 



a message should be sent over very quickly. So Edison 
jumped on a locomotive and tooted the whistle like he would 
tick the telegraph instrument, making the engine say, in the 
language of the telegraph, ''Hello, Sarnia! Sarnia, do you 
get what I say?" After a little while, the telegraph operator 
on the other side, in Sarnia, understood the language, and. 




THE TRIUMPHS OF ELECTRIC LIGHTING AS SEEN AT THE PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION 
AT BUFFALO IN 1901. 

jumping on an an engine, talked back to Edison with the whistle. 
This cleverness on Edison's part was much appreciated by 
the railroad and telegraph people, and they employed him at 
once and sent him to several places, all of which he lost by 
experimenting. Finally he went down to Cincinnati, where 
he got a salary of sixty dollars a month. 

14 



2i6 THOMAS A. EDISON 

One day the operators from Cleveland came down to Cin- 
cinnati. Edison was on the day force and did not have to 
work at night, but that night all of the Cincinnati office mates 
went out for what they called a jolly good time with the Cleve- 
land visitors. Edison never drank nor wasted time, so he 
stayed at the office all night, and sent in all the reports for the 
fellows who were off on what they called a "jamboree." 

Next morning when it was found out that he had done the 
work of several men in sending in the reports, his employers 
were so pleased that they increased his salary to one hundred 
and five dollars a month. 

From Cincinnati, Edison went to Memphis, Tennessee, 
where the operators received one hundred and twenty-five 
dollars a month. Here his ability soon won the respect of 
some, but it made others very jealous of him. Even the 
manager himself, who was trying to make some invention 
known as the "Repeater," was very jealous of Edison. Fin- 
ally Edison invented a repeater which saved the work of one 
man to the company. This brought the young man consider- 
able reputation, but it made the manager so mad, that he made 
up a false charge against Edison and had him dismissed. 

Now, though Edison had been earning a large salary, he 
had been sending most of it home to help his poor parents, 
and all the balance of it he spent for books and instruments 
for his experiments, so he had no money left. But he was 
determined to get to Louisville. 

So starting from Memphis, Tennessee, he walked one hun- 
dred miles and then met a conductor he knew and got him to 
pass him the balance of the way. When he arrived at Louis- 
ville he was almost frozen. The soles of his shoes were worn 
off, his feet were sore, he had an old straw hat on, and a poor 
old linen duster was all he had for an overcoat. In this poor 



THOMAS A. EDISON 



217 



plight, he presented himself at the telegraph office, where they 
received him with smiles of distrust. They thought surely 
he was a tramp, but, as soon as they saw him at the key- 
board, they found he was the most expert operator of them 




EDISON AND HIS GREAT INVENTION. 

The invention of the phonograph is probably the most marvelous invention of recent years. The discovery 

of the principle of vibration in metal, due to sound of voice, is said to have been due to chance. 

Edison saw the possibility and achieved additional fame. 

all. In a little while they had so much respect for his ability, 
and he was so pleasant in his ways, that they all learned to 
like him. 

About this time there came reports from South America 
that made Edison think that was the place for him, so with 



2i8 THOMAS A. EDISON 

his little savings he started and got as far as New Orleans, 
where he found the ship had sailed away; and besides he 
met an old Spaniard who had traveled much and who told 
him that the United States was the best country in the world. 

So Edison decided to stay in America, and without seek- 
ing another position, he went to Port Huron to visit his par- 
ents, and from there he went back to Louisville, Kentucky, 
where he remained for quite a long time, setting up his labora- 
tory and also collecting around him all sorts of curious ma- 
chines. When the other operators went on what they called 
a "jamboree," Edison remained at home and studied. 

I have told you that he was a great buyer of books. While 
in Louisville he bought fifty volumes of the North American 
Review, and carried them home to his room and spent much 
of the day in reading them. After working all night at the 
telegraph office, he went home the next morning to find that 
some of his mean companions had carried off the whole fifty 
volumes of books, put them in a pawnshop and were lying 
about in his room drunk on the money. Two of them had 
actually gotten into his bed with their boots on. He pulled 
them out of bed and left them lying on the floor to sleep off 
their drunken stupor, while he went to bed for his regular 
sleep. Of course, they never paid him for his books, and 
besides, as long as he stayed there in Louisville, they were 
continually borrowing money from him, which they never paid 
back. He was always too generous to refuse anyone when 
they asked him. After a while they moved out of the old 
office into a new office, and they made a rule that no on-e 
should take the instruments from the office, nor should they 
use any of the chemicals. 

Edison had been doing this in his experiments, and, as he 
always returned them in good time, he thought it would make 



THOMAS A. EDISON 



219 



no difference, so he concluded to take one of the Instruments 
away in spite of the rules. Then he concluded he would get 
some sulphuric acid. This acid accidentally fell from his 
hands, ate through the floor, dripped through to the manager's 
room below, ate up his desk and all the carpet. So the next 
morning Edison was called before the manager and discharged. 
Does it not look as if the 
poor young fellow was in 
what boys call "hard luck?'* 
He went home aijain to 
Port Huron, where he re- 
mained for about a year and 
a half. By this time he was 
twenty-one years of age, 
and he now discovered a 
means of making one wire 
do the work of two, thus 
saving the people who 
owned the wire five thou- 
sand dollars, and so pleased 
the Grand Trunk Company 
that they presented Edison 
with a free pass to Boston, 
and gave him a position in 
the Franklin Telegraph 
Office there. But the poor 
fellow as usual had no money. He had spent ever}^thing for 
books and experiments, so he had to leave home in his worn- 
out clothes, and after spending four days on the road and 
getting veiy little sleep, he appeared before the manager of 
the office at Boston, where he was to work, and went to work 
that very same evening. But the operators there were very 




MR. MARCONI'S APPARATUS FOR WIRELESS 

TELEGRAPHY. 

The latest development in use of electricity for sending 

messages 



330 THOMAS A. EDISON 

finely, dressed men, and they laughed at the young fellow, 
whom they called "the jay from the wooly West." 

He started to work the first evening at six o'clock, and the 
operators thought they would have some fun out of the new 
man, so they sent him over to the table to take a special report 
for the Boston Herald. Now, they had gotten the fastest 
telegraph operator in New York to send the message, and had 
wired him they had a new man in the office, a regular "jay 
from the wooly West," they called him, and they wished he 
would par^iyze him by sending the message so fast he could 
not take it. 

Edison wrote a very plain and yet a very rapid hand. The 
men stood around as he received the message with perfect 
ease, and looked on with astonishment. After that they had 
the greatest respect for him, and the "jay from the wooly 
West" became one of the best-liked men in the office. 

But he began his old tricks of experimenting again. We 
will tell you one of them. In the office the roaches were very 
bad, and the operators used to squirt sulphuric acid on them 
and stamp them with their feet, but, in spite of everything they 
did, the roaches would run up over their necks and through 
everything and gave them great annoyance. 

Now Edison soon tried an experiment which was very 
amusing to the men, but I dare say was not enjoyed by the 
roaches. He put up some tin strips along the wall, and 
smeared all over the tin strips such things to eat as the roaches 
were very fond of No sooner was this done than the roaches 
came from all directions and in a minute the strip was fairly 
black with them. Edison fastened a wire to the lower end of 
the strip and another to the top, running both down to his 
table and attached them to a strong battery. Instantly the 
roaches came raining down dead ; but the others kept coming. 



THOMAS A. EDISON 221 

Every time one would get on the strip, he would tumble off 
dead. For a long time the men stood around roaring with 
laughter as the roaches came raining down. 

They voted Edison to be the smartest man in the lot and 
called him the e-lec-tro-cu-tor, and wanted to take him out 
and treat him ; but as he neither drank liquors nor smoked, 
they had to be content with giving him their thanks. 

We would like to tell you other amusing things of Mr. Edi- 
son, of which there are very many, but we will have to say 
something now of his great inventions. His hardships were 
now over, and prosperity smiled on him ever after. 

In 1864, while in Boston, Edison conceived the idea of send- 
ing two messages at once over the same wire. He kept 
experimenting on this until he went to New York in 1871, 
and there he completed it. He afterwards made this instru- 
ment so that it would send sixteen rnessages over one wire, 
eight in each direction, and it has saved millions of dollars to 
the telegraph companies. 

He has also improved the telegraph system, so that instead 
of sending fifty or sixty words a minute, as they had formerly 
done, he made it possible to send several thousand words a 
minute. After Edison went to New York, he also made a 
printing telegraph, which is used in all the large stock quota- 
tion houses. This brought him hundreds of thousands of 
dollars profit, and a large factory was built in Newark, New 
Jersey, of which he was made superintendent, and he began to 
grow rich very fast. Many of these machines are found in 
every city of the Union. 

About this time, a man by the name of Mr. Bell invented 
the telephone. That is a little machine which you can walk 
up to and talk to a friend several miles away, but it was not 
in a very perfect state until Mr. Edison invented what is known 



222 THOMAS A. EDISON 

as his "transmitter," an important attachment which is used 
with the "Bell telephone" all over the world. 

Mr. Edison's next invention is known as the "megaphone," 
by the use of which two persons may whisper to each other a 
quarter of a mile away. With one of these to the ear you 
can hear cattle eating grass four or five miles away, or you can 
speak to or hear the replies from a ship far out at sea. 

Next Mr. Edison invented the "phonograph," which means 
a sound writer — the most wonderful thing of all. A person 
may talk or sing or whistle into this machine, and the sound 
of his voice will make little marks upon a roll of gelatin inside, 
and when you start the machine to moving, you can put in 
your ears little tubes which are attached to the phone, and it 
will reply back to you just what was said or sung to it. 

In 1889, at the great exposition in France, Mr. Edison had 
forty-seven of these phonographs on exhibition. There were 
at that exhibition people from all parts of the world. Buffalo 
Bill was there with his company of Indians. They got the 
big Sioux Chief, Red Shirt, to talk into the phonograph. He 
did so, never thinking that it would keep what he said. 

Then they let him put his ear to the phone, and he heard 
his own voice speaking back to him out of the machine. He 
thought it was the Great Spirit talking to him, and he ran 
away, much frightened, and could not be induced to come 
near it again. Nor would any other of the Indians go closer 
than twenty or thirty feet, nor would any one of them speak 
a word in its presence after Red Shirt had told them what it 
had done. There was another man, De Brazza, who brought 
fifteen men from fifteen different tribes in Africa, all speaking 
different languages, and they got each one of them to talk into 
the phone. All the great men of France and others who vis- 
isted there, among them Mr. Gladstone and the Prince of 



THOMAS A. EDISON 223 

Wales, from England, talked in this wonderful phonograph, 
and thus Mr. Edison collected all the languages of the world 
in his phonograph. Then he set them up and charged the 
people a price to hear the voices of these strange men and 
people, and it is 
said that an aver- 
age of thirty 
thousand people 
a day paid to lis- 
ten to the pho- 
nograph. Such 
a machine as this 
has been better 
for Mr. Edison 
than one of the 
famous Klondike 
gold mines, for 
now they are put 
all over the world 
and are bringing 
him in royalties 
of immense sums 
every day. He 
has collected the 
voices of all the 
prominent sing- 
ers and the music thomas a. edison 
of the great bands of the world, and the speeches of the great 
orators, and the voices of such notable people as the Oueen 
of England, the President of France, and all the other^eat 
rulers in the world, so that you may hear them in the phono- 
graph. 




224 THOMAS A. EDISON 

When he once gets a prominent person to talk in his pho- 
nograph, or has some great player like Paderewski play on a 
piano into it, he can make this phonograph talk or play to 
another phonograph, and so he can make thousands upon 
thousands of reproductions and send the voice of any person 
anywhere he pleases. It would take more space than we can 
possibly give to tell you of the wonderful things the phono- 
graph has done or is doing, but it will, no doubt, do more 
wonderful things in the future. 

A great phonograph factory was built in 1878 at Orange, 
New Jersey. The people who are interested with Mr. Edison 
in this factory paid him ten thousand dollars cash at the begin- 
ning and agreed to give him one-fifth of all the money they 
received from sales. He made also a similar arrangement in 
London, another in Russia, and another in France, and so 
on, through all the European countries. His phonograph 
alone has made him a millionaire. 

Mr. Edison and Mr. Simms have also invented an electric 
torpedo, to run in the water and blow up ships in battle. He 
has also made what he calls a water telephone, and a chemi- 
cal telephone, and a mercury telephone and several other kinds 
of the same instrument. Then there is the electric pen and 
the beautiful electric light — known as the incandescent lamp — 
which is used all over the world ; the mimeograph, and many 
other things. 

In 1873 Mr. Edison was married to Miss Mary Stillwell, a 
young lady who had been helping him in his experiments. 
She was sitting at a machine when Mr. Edison asked her to 
marry him, but she would not promise right at once, and then 
when the wedding-day came Mr. Edison was so busy he for- 
got it. But she forgave him and married him the next day. 
In 1876 Mr. Edison removed his home from Newark, New 



THOMAS A. EDISON 225 

Jersey, to Menlo Park, New Jersey, and since that time has 
devoted his entire attention to the invention of electrical ma- 
chines. He has invented many scientific instruments, which 
we cannot explain to our young friends, but which have been 
a very great help to the world. 

Mr. Edison's home at Menlo Park is a beautiful place, and 
his library contains a great many books on science and a great 
many of the best books on literature. He also has a library 
in his workshop for the benefit of his workmen. It is said 
that every scientific magazine in the world comes to this library, 
and he encourages his men to read and study as he does. 
Mrs. Edison, herself, is very much interested in the work, and 
is very friendly and sociable with her old friends, many of 
whom still remember when she was with them in the shop. 

Mr. Edison, while very friendly and kind to his men, is, at 
the same time, a very hard worker. Sometimes he works for 
two whole days, when he becomes very much absorbed in 
anything, without stopping to eat or sleep. On one occasion 
he locked the door and made his important workmen stay in 
the shop with him for two days and a half without any sleep, 
in order that he might carry out some important work that 
could not be delayed. At the end of that time, he sent all 
his men home to stay for two days, and he himself slept for 
thirty-six hours. 

But I must take time to tell you of one more of Mr, Edi- 
son's inventions, the kinetoscope — out of which have grown 
the vitascope and the biograph — which takes and shows pic- 
tures so you can see everything in motion. If any of my lit- 
tle readers have not seen any of these pictures, I advise you 
to do so the first opportunity you have. You would hardly 
believe but that they were people or animals running around 
before you — every motion, every expression, is brought to you 



226 THOMAS A. EDISON 

SO plainly. Now, you will see a great express train come 
rushing by you, with the smoke pouring out of the engine ; 
horses gallop with their riders on their backs ; little girls and 
boys play in their yards, and you see them chasing each other, 
and all the motions that they make are shown to you by this 
wonderful instrument. One of the funniest things that the 
writer ever saw in a biograph was a pillow fight between two 
little girls. 

I trust that this short account of the life and the many 
things that Thomas A. Edison, known as the "Wizard of 
Menlo Park," has done, will induce my little readers to learn 
more of him and his wonderful inventions. He is himself 
worth many millions of dollars ; but for every dollar he owns, 
his inventions have, perhaps, saved hundreds of thousands 
of dollars for other people. 

The great lesson which we want to learn from his life is, 
that industry and perseverance are always rewarded. 



THE EVENTFUL LIFE OF 

James A. Garfield, 

The Boy on the Canal Boat. The Second flartyr President. 



WOULD you 
not like to 
hear the story 
of another boy who 
began life almost if not 
quite as poor as Abra- 
ham Lincoln, and was 
a great and good man, 
and was the second 
martyr President of the 
United States? Do 
you know what a mar- 
tyr is? Martyrs are 
those noble men and 
women who have been 
put to death by wicked 
persons because they 
were good and noble 
and their righteous ac- 
tions displeased those 
who were wicked and 




PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



227 



228 JAMES A. GARFIELD 

selfish. Abraham Lincoln was the first President of the Uni- 
ted States who was a martyr. You remember reading his in- 
teresting story. We will now tell you the life-story of another 
farmer boy, who by hard work became one of the greatest men 
in the United States, and who was, like Abraham Lincoln, 
finally elected President of the United States, and like him, 
became a martyr. 

His name was James A. Garfield. Look at his picture and 
see if you don't think he has a strong, manly and noble face. 
The story of his life will help every noble boy who wants to 
succeed and do good in the w^orld. 

About seventy years ago, when the great State of Ohio was 
little more than a wilderness, a man by the name of Abram 
Garfield moved from the State of New York out into the wild 
country of Ohio, and settled in Cuyahoga County. The name 
Cuyahoga is an Indian word, and at that time there were a 
great many Indians in the State. Abram Garfield had mar- 
ried, before going to Ohio, a young woman by the name of 
Eliza Ballou, whose ancestors had fled from persecution in 
France about one hundred and fifty years before. 

When Abram Garfield and his young wife moved to Ohio 
they settled in what was known as "The Wilderness," where 
quite a number of other people from Connecticut had recently 
moved and built for themselves houses. The whole country 
was covered with big forests, and the first work to be done 
was to clear away a place in the woods and build them a lit- 
tle log-cabin, such as you will see in the picture on another 
page. It had but one room, with a door, three windows, and 
a chimney at one end. Abram Garfield and his wife had three 
children when they moved to this wilderness, and about a year 
after they got there their youngest son was born. They named 
him James Abram — "Abram" being for his father. There 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



229 



were now mother and father and four children living in this 
little log-cabin out in the wilderness. 

All day long the father cut trees in the forest, or worked in 
his new fields among the stumps which were still left in the 
ground ; but he was very industrious and raised enough on 
his farm to support his family, while Mrs. Garfield, with her 
spinning-wheel and 
loom, was all day 
busy in spinning 
thread and weaving 
cloth to make them 
clothes. They had 
no servant, but 
waited on them- 
selves, not only 
growing the cattle, 
hogs, and chickens 
on their little farm, 
and raising the corn 
and wheat which they 
ate, but also spinning 
and weaving the 
cloth, which Mrs. 
Garfield made into 
clothes for the chil- 
dren. Don't you think this was a very hard life ? So it would 
be to most of our young people now. But they owned their 
little farm and house ; both together, perhaps, worth two or 
three hundred dollars. Of course, they had to do their cook- 
ing, eating, sleeping, receive their company, spin and weave 
and make their clothes, all in their little one-room house. 
Still they were honest and contented, and every morning 




THE BOY JAMES GARFIELD BRINGING HIS FIRST DAY'S 
EARNINGS TO HIS MOTHER. 



230 JAMES A. GARFIELD 

when Mr. Garfield went away, with his axe on his shoulder or 
following the plow, you might have heard him whistling or 
singing a merry tune. As soon as breakfast was over, the lit- 
tle fellows, in the summer, were out of doors, or away in the 
woods to pick berries, or to bring wood for their mother to 
cook with, or to carry water from the spring, which was some 
distance from the house. 

At night, when they sat alone in their little cabin, their father 
or mother would read, or they would tell them stories about 
the old times in Connecticut or New York, or about the long 
and weary journey from New York to Ohio, and the wonder- 
ful things that they saw on^their way. So, with all, as I have 
told you, it was a very happy and contented little household. 

Mr. Garfield was beginning to be prosperous as he thought, 
and looked forward to having a big farm one of these days, 
and build them a house which would, perhaps, have as many 
as three rooms, or maybe four. 

But suddenly, one day, Mr. Garfield came home very ill. 
There were few doctors in that wild wilderness, and those who 
were there, as a rule, knew very little about the practice of 
medicine ; so, after a short illness, the good man died when 
he was only thirty-three years of age. 

Can you think of anything more sad than this little one- 
room log-cabin, far out in the forests of Ohio, with very few 
neighbors near enough to visit them, the husband dead, and 
the poor woman with her four little children, left alone so far, 
far away from her friends and relatives in the East? Do you 
not think the first thing she would do would be to try to sell 
her little farm, and with her children go back to New York or 
Connecticut? 

This, however, was not what Mrs. Garfield did. She deter- 
mined to remain in her little home, and. with her own hands. 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



231 



try to make a living and raise her children. She was a good 
v/oman and had a fair education, and she taught her little ones 
and read to them out of good books. 

James was now a baby, and for several years it was a life of 
struggle and privation. She was so poor that, if she had 
lived in one of the great cities, the people would think they 
must go to her aid and send her food and clothing to help her 




GARFIELD'S BIRTHPLACE AND THE HOME OF HIS CHILDHOOD. 

in her distress, and so they should ; but it was different far 
out in the wilderness. 

Almost everybody was poor there, and lived on the plainest 
of food, and dressed in the plainest clothes, and there were 
no rich people to be seen. 

When little James A. Garfield was only three years old, a 
neighboring school was started in a little log-hut, and James 
was sent along with the other children. Before he was four 

15 



232 JAMES A. GARFIELD 

years of age he had learned to read ; and by the time he was 
ten, it is said, he had borrowed and read nearly all the books 
in his neighborhood. From that time till the close of his life, 
he was a great reader and student 

You will remember that Abraham Lincoln always carried a 
book with him to his work, and you also remember Patrick 
Henry and George Peabody and Thomas A. Edison, and 
other boys about whom we have told you, educated themselves 
by reading. Now, we don't mean by this that our young 
friends do not need an education. Perhaps all of those men 
would have been better off, if they had had oportunities of 
getting a good education in school. Garfield believed in an 
education, as you shall hereafter learn. 

By the time James w^as ten years of age, he had learned to 
do almost everything about the farm which could be done by 
so small a boy. He not only helped the other children and 
his mother, but, when they had done their own work, he fre- 
quently went to other farms and worked for the neighbors that 
he might make a little money to help his mother along. 

He had very little time to play, so he made play out of his 
work by doing it always cheerfully. His mother was a great 
worker herself, and, besides, she was a very religious woman, 
and, it is said, her good advice and happy hymns and songs 
always sent the children to their tasks with a feeling that they 
were doing not only their duty, but that it was a pleasure 
for them to do it. 

All the spring and summer the children worked, but every 
winter their mother sent them to the little neighborhood 
school. By the time James was fourteen years old he had a 
fair knowledge of arithmetic and grammar, and he had read 
his school "History of the United States" so many times 
that he almost knew it by heart. Of all the books he was 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



233 



familiar with, he, perhaps, knew most about the Bible. It is 
said there was never a day in Mrs. Garfield's home that she 
and the children did not read certain parts of the Bible, and 
as the children grew older, they often got into warm discus- 
sions, which they called arguments, about what this or that 
passage meant. In this way Garfield came to manhood know- 
ing a large portion of the Bible by heart and very familiar 
with it all. 

In after years, when he became a great man, James G. Blaine, 




GARFIELD ON THE TOW-PATH 

the famous orator and statesman in the United States Senate, 
said that Mr. Garfield's power lay largely in his earnest style 
of speaking and his familiarity with the Bible, of which he was 
a constant student. 

James Garfield also loved to read tales of the sea and tales 
of adventure. His imagination was especially kindled by 
Cooper's famous "Leather-Stocking Tales," and he used to 
regard "Natty Bumpo," the hero of these five famous book';, 



234 JAMES A. GARFIELD 

as the greatest character in American history ; for he could 
hardly believe that he was only the hero of a novel and not 
a real man. Perhaps he loved these tales so much because 
he himself lived in the wilderness, and Mr. Cooper's descrip- 
tions of the "Pioneer Indians" in the ''Leather-Stocking 
Tales " were very much like what Garfield himself knew about. 

He was also fond of reading Cooper's "Sea Tales;" and 
the story of "Long Tom" and his wonderful adventures on 
the ocean filled him with delight, and made him want to go 
to sea himself so much that in 1848, when he was seventeen 
years old, he left home and went to Cleveland, Ohio, and 
offered to go on board of one of the great lake schooners as 
a sailor. It was a day or two before the ship was to go out, 
and during that time Garfield found out that the sailors, as a 
rule, were very rough men, and that life on the sea was not 
so. jolly and pleasant as he had supposed. So he decided he 
would not go on the lake, and immediately turned from the 
shore and started home ; but he had not gone very far before 
he began to feel ashamed of himself 

He was without money, and he disliked to go back home 
that way. Besides, like many other ambitious boys, he thought 
he ought to do something to tell the people about when he 
got home. So he went to the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal, 
on which they ran boats drawn by horses on the bank, and 
he hired himself to drive the horses to one of these boats. 
He was to receive twelve dollars a month for his work. 

Now, James had been used to driving horses at home on 
the farm, and during his trips on the towpath he pleased his 
employers so much that at the end of the round trip they pro- 
moted him from the position of a driver, by putting him on 
board to steer the boat instead of driving the horses. James 
thought this was quite an advance ; but it proved to be very 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



235 



much more dangerous than driving the horses, for he had to 
stand on the edge of the boat and work the rudder. 

He had lived inland all his life, and had had no experience 
at such work. Every once in a while the rudder would slip, 
and overboard he would go into the canal. It is said that on 
his first trip he actually fell overboard fourteen times, and, as 
he could not swim, he had to be rescued every time when the 
water was over his head. 
One dark, rainy night 
he came very near be- 
ing drowned, for no help 
was at hand when he 
fell into the water; but 
by the very best of luck 
he got hold of a rope 
and drew himself on 
deck. Now, we have 
told you before that 
James was a very religi- 
ous boy, so he thought 
it must be through the 
power of God that he 
was saved from drown- 
ing that dark night. He 
therefore determined to give up the canal boat, go home, try 
to get an education and be useful to his fellowman. 

Garfield, when a boy, also read two other books which had 
much to do with his career. One was the " Life of General 
Marion," the dashing hero of the Revolution, who, with his 
swamp-rangers in South Carolina, had troubled and annoyed 
the British so much; the other was the ''Life of Napoleon 
Bonaparte," the noted French General and Emperor. 




GARFIELD AT THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN, WHEN HE 
ENTERED THE SEMINARS 



3^ JAMAIS A. QARFTSLX) 

These two books, Garfield said, made him want to be a 
soldier. He read them over several times, and they led him 
to read other books of great warriors ; but it was a good while 
before he had an opportunity to gratify his ambition to be a 
soldier. In the meantime, let us tell you what he did. 

After leaving his work on the canals, he returned home in 
the winter of 1849, ^^^ entered a high school, called a sem- 
inary, at Chester, Ohio, about ten miles from his home. He 
had but very little money, so he and three other young men 
boarded themselves. They rented a room for a very small 
price, made their own beds, cooked their own food, and ate 
in their room. 

Garfield persuaded them that they could do without meat 
and other expensive things, so they lived pretty largely on 
bread, rice, milk, and potatoes, and it is said that their board 
did not cost them more than fifty cents each a week. At this 
small price of living, you can see it required but very little 
money to carry them through their winter's term at school. 

By and by vacation came. What do you suppose Garfield 
did then ? He was now a young man of eighteen. There 
were no rich uncles or aunts or other friends for him to visit; 
and if there had been, we dare say he would not have done 
it. Instead, he went and hired himself to work for a carpen- 
ter, and soon learned to be a very good workman. 

He did carpenter work when he could get it to do, and at 
other times he worked in the harvest-fields, and did anything 
and everything to get money for his schooling. After his 
first term, he was able, in this way, to take care of himself 
entirely, and did not ask his mother or anyone else for their aid. 

Garfield was always one of the best students in the school. 
He also joined heartily in the sports with the other young men 
to keep up his bodily strength. He was as good at all kinds 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



237 



of sports, and as ready for them, as he was for his hard study. 
He played ball and practiced boxing and other things that 
they did, and was always a manly and brave fellow. 

He was very peaceable too, but would not stand for people 
to impose on him. One day, it is said, he thrashed the bully 
of the school in a stand-up fight, because the fellow did some 
mean or unkind act. Garfield attended this school for three 
winters, and in August, 185 1, he started to a new school known 




HIRAM COLLEGE, WHERE GARFIELD WENT TO SCHOOL, AND OF WHICH 
HE BECAME PRESIDENT. 

as Hiram College. From this moment his zeal to get a good 
education grew stronger. He soon had an excellent knowl- 
edge of Latin, algebra, natural philosophy, and botany. He 
made all his expenses at this school by teaching in one of the 
departments and working during his vacation. 

After three years he was not only prepared to go to one of 
the finest colleges in the East, but had saved three hundred 
and fifty dollars toward paying his expenses. Think of a 



23« JAMES A. GARFIELD 

young man going to school, paying his own way, and actually 
making three hundred and fifty dollars besides! That is the 
kind of boys that amount to something in this world. 

In the fall of 1853 he left his native State, Ohio, and jour- 
neyed east and entered Williams College, Massachusetts. 
Two years later he graduated from that fine school, and 
straightway was made the Professor of Languages and Litera- 
ture in Hiram College, which he had formerly attended ; and 
the very next year, when he was twenty-six years old, he was 
made President of Hiram College. 

One year later, he married Miss Lucretia Rudolph, one of 
his old schoolmates with whom he had fallen in love while at 
Chester Seminary. 

Now, we have told you the interesting boyhood and school- 
days of James A. Garfield, let us tell you some of the great 
things that he did in later life ; for if he had stopped here, 
though he was a college president, the world would never 
have known much of him, and his life would not have been 
written in this book. 

Mr. Garfield continued to be President of Hiram College 
for five years, and under his wise management the college 
took on new life. There were very soon twice as many stu- 
dents as there had been before, and everybody seemed to get 
some of Mr. Garfield's zeal. He grew so popular that in 1858, 
when some of his friends were running for an office, they beg- 
ged him to make some speeches for them, which he did. 

This made him even more popular, and in 1859 they elected 
him to the State Senate of Ohio, where he was a very influ- 
ential member. In 1861, when the war broke out, he per- 
suaded the Ohio Senate to vote twenty thousand soldiers and 
three millions of dollars to fight for the Union. This made 
Mr. GaF^ld so great a fevorite that tkc Gbvcrnbr of Ohio 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



239 



offered him the command of the Forty-second Regiment, which 
was then being organized for the war. Many of the young 
men in the regiment were, or had been, students of Hiram 
College, of which Mr. Garfield had been President; so he 
consented to command the regiment, and in December, 1861, 
he took them down 
into Kentucky and 
West Virginia, to 
join in the fighting. 
There were at this 
time two Confeder- 
ate armies march- 
ing north from the 
State of Kentucky. 
Mr. Garfield met 
one of them, led by 
General Humphrey 
Marshall, on a lit- 
tle creek known as 
the Big Sandy, in 
the Cumberland 
Mountains. 

General Mar- 
shall had about five 
thousand soldiers 
with him and Col- 
onel Garfield had 
only about eleven hundred, but he surprised the Confederate 
focres in such a way and protected his own men so well, by 
getting in the best position w^hcre they could be sheltered from 
the fire of the enemy, that General Marshall and his army were 
driven from Kentucky. 




THE CAPITOL, AT WASHINGTON. 



240 JAMES A. GARFIELD 

This brilliant victory of Colonel Garfield's was heralded all 
over the North, and he was praised by the greatest men in the 
army for his wise management and brave fighting. 

After this he was directed to join General Buell's forces and 
go to the aid of General Grant in Mississippi. They arrived 
just in time to fight the second day in the great battle of Shi- 
loh, where the Union army was again victorious. 

Garfield and his soldiers were next set to work in rebuild- 
ing the railroads and bridges which had been destroyed by 
both armies; but not being accustomed to that warm South- 
ern climate, he took malarial fever and was obliged to return 
home to get well, after which he was sent to join the staff of 
General Rosecrans, who made him Commander-in-Chief of 
his staff, and he kept this position as long as he remained in 
the army. One of the last brave things that Garfield did as a 
soldier was at the great battle of Chickamauga, near Chatta- 
nooga, Tennessee. The fighting had been very hard and for 
a time it looked as if the Confederates would be victorious. 
General Rosecrans thought they would surely win the day, so 
he with Colonel Garfield left the fighting ground and hastened 
to Chattanooga to make arrangements for his army to retreat 
so they would not be captured. 

General Thomas was left to command the Union forces. As 
soon as they reached Chattanooga, Garfield begged General 
Rosecrans to let him go back to the battlefield and join Gen- 
eral Thomas. This he did, and with his help General Thomas 
made a fresh assault for one-half an hour on the Confederates, 
and drove them back far enough to permit the Union forces 
to retreat in perfect safety at night. After this gallant service, 
Colonel Garfield was made Major-General, and since that time 
has been called General Garfield. Soon after the great battle 
of Chickamauga, General Garfield was elected to Congress, 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



241 



and though his salary as Major-General was double that of a 
Congressman, he felt that he could do more good at Wash- 
ington, so he gave up his position in the war and went to Con- 
gress. Here he was as attentive to business and industrious 
as he had always been as a boy at work, a student in school, 
and as a president of a college. He had many honors placed 
upon him in Congress, and in 1877, when Mr. Blaine became 




ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 



a Senator, Mr. Garfield was made leader of his party, and 
three years later the State of Ohio elected him to the Senate. 
But the great honor came in June of that same year, when 
the Republican National Convention in Chicago nominated 
him for President of the United States over and above all the 
other great statesmen and warriors whom the nation wanted 
to honor. 



242 JAMES A. GARFIELD 

General Hancock, who also fought in the war with General 
Garfield, was nominated by the Democratic Party for the same 
office; but General Garfield was elected. In a little while he 
removed with his family from Ohio to the White House at 
Washington. Was not this a great step-up from his early home? 

Some of Mr. Garfield's very worst enemies were the great- 
est men of the nation. By that we do not mean the best men, 
but they were brilliant and learned, and shrewd men, and great 
politicians, like Mr. Conkling, of New York. Mr. Conkling 
did everything he could to make President Garfield unhappy, 
and to throw all the difficulties possible in his way. 

But, finally, Mr. Conkling found out that he could not con- 
trol the Senators as he tried to do, so he and Mr. Piatt, another 
Senator from New York, resigned their places in the United 
States Senate and went away. These things made a great 
commotion among the political men, and perhaps was the 
cause of the tragedy which followed. 

Mr. Garfield had been in office only a few months, when on 
July 2, 1 88 1, he and his family rose early at the White House 
and went to the railway station to take the train for Massa- 
chusetts. Mr. Garfield was going back to Williams College 
to attend the closing exercises of that school, and several mem- 
bers of his cabinet and their friends were going with him. 

James G. Blaine, the great Maine statesman and orator, was 
his Secretary of State, and rode beside President Garfield to 
the depot. Mrs. Garfield, who had been at Long Branch, 
New Jersey, where she had gone to cure herself of malarial 
fever, was to join them at New York. A fine private car was 
waiting for the President and his party. 

Presently the carriage drove up to the door, and President 
Garfield and Secretary Blaine came out smiling to the crowd 
that stood around, looking very happy. They passed inside 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 243 

the door of the waiting-room. A slender, middle-aged man 
had for some time been walking nervously up and down the 
room. As the President and Mr. Blaine came up, he quickly 
drew a pistol from his pocket and, taking deliberate aim, shot 
the President in the shoulder. Mr. Garfield turned quickly to 
see who had shot him, when the assassin fired again, and the 
President sank to the floor, the blood gushing from his side. 
Secretary Blaine sprang for the murderer, but others caught 
him, and Mr. Blaine went back to the President's side. 

They lowered Mr. Garfield on a mattress and carried him 
swiftly to the White House, where he quickly gave orders that 
a message should be sent to Mrs. Garfield and ask her to come 
home immediately. Mr. Garfield's message was: "Tell her 
I am seriously hurt, but I am myself, and hope she will come 
to me soon. I send her my love." 

That evening Mrs. Garfield was at her husband's side. For 
almost three months the brave, strong man struggled between 
life and death through the hot summer days. At last he was 
removed to Elberon, on the ocean shore near Long Branch, 
New Jersey, and placed in a cottage where the cooling breezes 
of the sea brought him much relief, and it was hoped would 
save his life ; but it was not to be. 

President Garfield died at night, September 19th, almost 
without a struggle. The news was flashed all over the world 
by telegraph wires, and nearly every town and all the cities in 
the United States were draped in mourning. 

The President's remains were taken back to Washington, 
where great crowds of people viewed them, and thousands of 
faces were wet with tears as they passed his coffin. The sad 
funeral procession then moved slowly to Cleveland, Ohio, 
where a splendid tomb was prepared on the shores of Lake 
Erie, not far from his old home, and it was there they laid him 



244 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



down to rest. All along the way, the moving train passed 
through lines of sorrowful-faced people, who stood with 
uncovered heads and with tearful eyes as the train moved by. 
In the House of Representatives at Washington, a few months 
later, Secretary Blaine delivered a great speech in praise of 
the dead President. 

The vile man, Charles J. Guiteau, who killed the President, 
was one of the displeased politicians, who pretended to think 
that Mr. Garfield had done wrong in not giving him and cer- 
tain other members of his party appointments. He was tried 
before the court of the land and hanged in January, 1882. 

If you should go to Washington, D. C, you may see in the 
waiting-room, at the depot where President Garfield was shot, 
a stone tablet, a picture of which we show. 




TABLET IN WAITING-ROOM WHERE 
GARFIELD WAS SHOT. 



William McKinley, 



idler, Statesman, Friend. The Third Martyr President. 




E 



'■>/>'- 



VERYBODY begins as a boy 
and so we must begin with 
McKinley in his boyhood days. 
He was one of the kind of boys 
we Hke to read about. The stories of 
his life as a fisher, a skater, a black- 
berry picker, a playmate, and of the 
boy who had his boyish battles to 
fight and win, are such as to make 
every boy's and man's heart warm 
with memories of similar experiences. 
Niles, Ohio, was McKinley's birth- 
place. He was born there on the 
The house in which he was born 
has recently been cut in two, and the section which includes 
the room of his birth has been moved a mile away, to a pretty 
I; pot known to the people of Niles as Riverside Park. 

It was a poor little two-story frame house, but was far 
better than the log-huts in which some of our Presidents were 
born. McKinley's parents were not rich, but they had enough 
to live on, and he had plenty of time for play and for school- 
life. He was a good student and a good boy. His pious 
mother read her Bible to him till he knew much of it by heart, 
McKinley got a good education. He went to the 

245 



WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



29th of January, 1843. 



246 WILLIAM Mckinley 

commoR school at Niles, to the academy at Poland, and to 
Allegheny College at Meadville, in Pennsylvania. Here he 
soon got sick and had to go home ; and now he became a 
school-teacher himself, for his father had lost much of his 
money, and the boy had to help the family along. He was 
a careful and painstaking teacher, as he was in all things he 
undertook, and was liked by the boys and girls. 

All this was before the great civil war began. When 
Fort Sumter was fired on, and the people everywhere were 
getting ready to fight, young McKinley was just past his 
eighteenth year. He quit teaching, and away he marched to 
the war with the first company of Poland volunteers. 

For fourteen months our young recruit carried a musket 
in the ranks. He was a good soldier, obeyed all orders, and 
was always pleasant to his comrades. And he had plenty of 
soldiering among the West Virginia mountains, where he was 
now soaked with rain, now half-starved from lack of food, and 
worn out with marching, fighting and going through all sorts 
of rough work. The Ohio boys were kept chasing the raiders 
through the rough hills, and they had a hard enough time. 

Let us get on with the boy soldier's story. He had been 
made a sergeant for his good work in West Virginia. He 
was made a lieutenant for his good work at the terrible battle 
of Antietam. This is how it came about. 

McKinley was commissary sergeant of his regiment. 
That is, he had charge of the food supplies. He did not 
have to fight ; but was two miles back from the fighting line. 
Most boys would have thought that a good place to stay, but 
the boy sergeant did not think so. He thought only of the 
poor fellows in the ranks, fighting all day under the burning 
sun. How parched and hungry they must be ! What would 
they not give for a cup of hot coffee 1 



WILLIAM Mckinley 



247 



As soon as he thought of this, he got hold of some of 
the stragglers in the rear and set them to making coffee. 
There were plenty ot them, as there are in all battles. Then 



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WILLIAM Mckinley 



he filled two wagons with steam- 
ing cans of hot coffee and with 
food, and drove off with his mule 
teams for the line of battle. One 
of the wagons broke down, but 
the other kept on. He was 
ordered back, but nothing could 
stop him, and on to the lines he 
went at full speed. 

One of the officers says : 
"It was nearly dark when we heard tremendous cheering 
from the left of our regiment As we had been having 
heavy fighting right up to this time, our division com- 
mander. General Scammon, sent me to find out the cause 
16 ' 



248 WILLIAM Mckinley 

which I very soon found to be cheers for McKinley and 
his hot coffee. You can readily imagine the rousing wel- 
come he received from both officers and men. When you 
consider the fact of his leaving his post of security and 
driving into the middle of a bloody battle with a team of 
mules, it needs no words of mine to show the character and 
determination of McKinley, a boy of, at this time, not twenty 
years of age." 

When the Governor of Ohio heard the story of McKinley 
and his hot coffee for the fighting boys, he made him a lieut- 
enant. Don't you think he well deserved it? 

There are other stories of McKinley's gallant conduct. 
One of them comes from the time of the fighting in the Shen- 
andoah Valley, in July, 1864. Here the confederate General 
Early attacked General Crook and his men with so strong a 
force that Crook was driven back. General Hastings tells us 
how the young lieutenant in the face of death at the command 
of General Hayes, his commander, rode into the thick of the 
battle through a rain of shot and bursting shells, and brought 
out the regiment safely. This deed made a captain of the 
brave lieutenant. 

The fighting was over. The country was at peace. 
Everybody was getting back to work again. What would 
the young major do ? He had his living to make. He had 
tried teaching and fighting, and now he thought he would 
like to be a lawyer, as he was so good a talker. So he 
entered a law office and began to study as hard as he had 
fought. In two years he was ready to practice, and hung out 
his sign in Canton, Ohio. This place was his home for the 
rest of his life, and here he was buried when he died. 

Major McKinley was elected to Congress in 1876, nine 
years after he began to practice law. McKinley was fourteen 



WILLIAM Mckinley 249 

years in Congress, and in every one of those years he made 
his mark in some way or other. In 1890 he was defeated in 
the election for Congress, but he was too well known and too 
much liked to stay defeated long. If the country did not want 
him the State did, and the next year he was elected Governor 
of Ohio by a good majority. In 1893 he was re-elected by 
80,000 votes. 

And now came the time when the people of the whole 
country wanted McKinley. Ohio was not big enough to hold 
a man like him any longer. In 1896 a new President was to 
be chosen, and McKinley was the people's favorite, and was 
elected by a large number of votes. 

It was not a quiet chair to which President McKinley 
came, for he had to face war and insurrection and all the 
difficult questions these brought on. 

The Cubans, who live south of the United States, were 
treated so badly by Spain, that they began to fight for liberty. 
Then the Spaniards treated them worse than ever, causing 
thousands of them to starve to death. That was more than 
Americans could stand. McKinley asked Spain to stop her 
cruelty. When she would not, the people of the United 
States so sympathized with the poor Cubans, that armies and 
fleets were sent to fight the Spaniards in Cuba. President 
McKinley did not want war. He did all he could to keep it 
off But when he found that Spain would not listen to 
reason there was nothing left to do but to teach the Spaniards 
a lesson. 

Only a few great battles were fought Admiral Dewey 
won a great naval victory in the Philippines and then there 
were battles in Cuba. You know how the war ended. Cuba 
was taken from Spain and made a free nation. Porto Rico, 



250 WILLIAM McKINLEY 

in the West Indies, and the PhiHppine Islands, in the Pacific 
Ocean, were given over to this country. 

All this made plenty of work for the President. He did 
not please everybody with what he did, but no one can do 
that. He dealt ably and wisely with all the questions that 
came up, and in 1900, when there was another Presidential 
election, he was more popular than ever. He was chosen by 
the whole Republican Convention, and was elected with the 
great majority of 137 electoral votes. 

The second inauguration of President McKinley took 
place on March 4, 1901. All looked promising. The war in 
the Philippines was nearly at an end, the country was grow- 
ing greater and grander, business was better than ever, 
nobody dreamed of a great coming tragedy. The President 
and his wife took a long journey that spring through the 
South and West, from Washington to San Francisco. 

In September he went to Buffalo, in New York State, to 
see the great Fair that was being held there. Here the peo- 
ple greeted him like a beloved friend. On the 6th, that he 
might meet them more closely, a reception was held in the 
Temple of Music, where they would have an opportunity to 
shake hands with their President. 

Perhaps some of my readers may have been in Buffalo 
that day, visiting the Fair. Some of them may have been in 
the Temple of Music, and have seen the long line of people 
taking the President's hand and looking into his kindly, smil- 
ing face. Some of them may even have heard the fatal sound 
when a desperate villain fired a pistol at the President, and 
have seen the good man turn pale and fall back. " Let no 
one hurt him," he gasped, as the guards rushed furiously at 
the murderer. 

After that there was a week of terrible anxiety in the 



WILLIAM McKINLET agi 

country. Two bullets had struck the President, but for a time 
the doctors thought he would get well, and the people were 
full of hope. Then he suddenly began to sink, and on Friday, 
just one week from the time he was shot, death was very near. 
His wife was brought in and wept bitterly as she begged the 
doctors to save him. 

"Good bye, all; good bye," whispered the dying man. 
** It is God's way. His will be done." 

These were his last words. A few hours afterward he 
was dead. 

So passed away this great and noble-hearted man, the 
third of our martyred Presidents and one of the kindest and 
gentlest of them all. He was buried with all the ceremony 
and all the demonstrations of respect and affection the country 
could give. At the time his body was lowered into the grave, 
for five minutes the whole people came to rest, all business 
ceased, and a solemn silence overspread the land from sea 
to sea. Then the stir began again, and once more the world 
roared on. It never stops long even for the greatest of men. 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNGEST PRESIDENT, 

Theodore Roosevelt, 

The Man of a Strenuous Life. 




T 



HEODORE ROOSEVELT 

was a New York boy. He 
was born in that great city 
on October 27, 1858. He 
was taught at home to be active and 
industrious. He tells us himself: 
"My father, all my people, held 
that no one had a right to merely 
cumber the earth ; that the most 
contemptible of created beings is 
the man who does nothing. I 
imbibed the idea that I must work 
hard, whether at making money 
or whatever. The whole family training taught me that 
I must be doing, must be working — and at decent work. I 
made my health what it is. I determined to be strong and 
well, and did everything to make myself so. By the time I 
entered Harvard College I was able to take my part in what- 
ever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred and ran a great 
deal while in college, and though I never came in first, I got 
more good out of the exercise than those who did, because I 
immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself." 

When a little fellow Theodore was thin, pale and deli- 
6at€. No one thought he would make much of a man — if he 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



253 



lived to be one. He was taught at home and in private 
schools, for his parents were afraid to trust him to the rough 
play of the public schools. He did not like that. He wanted 
to be strong and to do what other boys did, and when he was 
old enough he began to do all he could to make himself 
strong. "I was deter- 
mined to make a man of 
myself," he says. 

There was not much 
he did not try. He 
learned to swim, he 
learned to row, he learned 
to ride. He climbed, he 
jumped, he ran, he 
tramped over the hills. 
If any one asked him to 
ride, he said he would 
rather walk. If asked to 
take a sail, he said he 
would rather row. That 
is the way the delicate 
child grew to be a hardy 
boy and a man with mus- 
cles like steel. He 
showed what nearly any . 
weak boy might do, if he 
chose to take the trouble. 

He was always fond of stories of animals and adventure. 
WTien he was only six years old he used to tell such stones 
to his little brother and sisters. All his animals talked and 
acted like boys or men, and his men were as strong as giants. 

When he got older he did not let anybody impose on 




THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN HIS 
HUNTING COSTUME, 



254 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

him. One day, when he was only a little fellow and went to 
a private school, he set out with his chum in a fine new sailor 
suit. Some of the public-school boys got in his way and 
called him a "dude." But they did not stay long, for Teddy 
and his chum went at them with their fists and fought their 
way through. Every day for a week it was the same thing. 
One day, after a hard battle, Teddy said to his chum: "Let's 
go round the block and come back and fight them again." 
He seemed to like fighting as much as he did later on. 

He was always ready to fight for his rights. One day he 
came home from school with his clothes covered with mud 
and his face and hands scratched and bleeding. 

''What is the matter, Teddy?" asked his father. 

"Why, a boy up the street made a face at me and said, 
'Your father's a fakir.' He was a good deal bigger than me, 
but I wouldn't stand that ; so I just pitched in. I had a pretty 
hard time, but I licked him." 

"That's right; I'm glad you licked him," said his father. 
You may sec that old Roosevelt was a good deal like young 
Roosevelt. 

When he was old enough the boy was sent to Harvard 
University. He studied well and graduated in 1880, and then 
spent a year in Europe. When he came to Switzerland and 
saw the Alps, the first thought he had was to climb them. He 
did it, too ; he went to the top of the Matterhorn and the 
Jungfrau, two of the hard ones to climb. 

When he came home in 1881 he was twenty-three years 
old. Nobody would have thought that this young fellow, with 
his strong frame, stout shoulders, and square jaws, had ever 
been delicate. He had fought his way to health and strength. 
He had plenty of money, and he might have spent the rest 
of his life in having a good, easy, lazy sort of time, but that 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 355 

was not Teddy Roosevelt's way. He was already at work, 
writing a book. It is called "The Naval War of 1812," and 
a good book it is, too It shows that he was then a thinker, 
and that he had read a great deal about the wars of the world. 

That was only home work. Out of doors he at once 
went in for politics. And he did it so well that he was 
quickly elected to the New York Legislature. He took his 
seat there in 1882, the youngest member in the House. 
Many of the old members looked on him with scorn and 
called him "silk stocking." They thought he was a rich 
man's son who had come there to play at politics. They did 
not dream what he meant to do. He went at their little games, 
" hammer and tongs." In two months' time he had all the 
reformers on his side, and was going for the political tricksters 
as he had gone for the school-boys. He stayed six years 
in the Legislature, and in that time he carried through a 
number of very useful bills. 

This is only one side of Theodore Roosevelt's life. I 
Jiave told you that he was fond of stories of animals and wild 
life from the time he was six years old. When he grew older 
he read all the books he could get on the subject of hunting 
and natural history, and was very fond of Cooper's novels of 
Indian life. And when he reached manhood he became a 
hunter himself, going every year to the "Wild West," where 
he had splendid times in hunting the big game of that region. 
There were no lions and tigers to hunt, but there were bears 
and catamounts, and they were bad enough. 

After he left the Legislature he was several years out of 
office, and these he spent in the West, hunting, fishing, ranch- 
ing, and doing all sorts of rough work. He started a cattle 
ranch of his own, and put up a rough log building on which 
he worked himself. It was so far in the wilderness that he 



256 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

shot a deer from his own front door. Here he had herds of 
cattle, and acted as cowboy as well as hunter. He would 
dress in a flannel shirt and overalls tucked into alligator boots, 
and would help his own cov/boys in rounding up the cattle, 
riding with the best of them. Then he would go home to 
sleep in bear-skins and buffalo robes, whose old wearers had 
fallen under his own rifle. 

Mr. Roosevelt has always been very short-sighted and 
has had to wear glasses. They called him "Four Eyes" in 
the West, and looked on him as a " tenderfoot " — that is, a 
man from the East who knows nothing of Western life. 

One day, when it was snowing and he had been out look- 
ing for lost cattle, he stopped at the hotel of a village in 
North Dakota. Here there was a "bad man" who wanted 
some one to fight with. He settled on Roosevelt. 

" Here, you, take a drink," he said roughly. 

" No, thank you. I don't want to drink," said Roose- 
velt, smiling. 

" You've got to drink." 

" I guess not," said Roosevelt, with another smile. 

"I say you have." And the "bad man" pulled his 
pistol. 

In a second he thought a sky-rocket had struck him, but 
it was Teddy Roosevelt's fist, which knocked him sprawling. 

"Where was I shot?" he asked, when he came to. 

It took a good hour to make him believe that he had 
been shot by a " tenderfoot's " fist. After that the wild folks 
had too much respect for " Four Eyes " to meddle with him. 

But he had a quarrel with one of his neighbors. There 
was a Frenchman, the Marquis de Mores, who owned a ranch 
next to his, and a quarrel broke out between the cowboys of 
the two ranches. Roosevelt heard the story and backed up 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 257 

his own cowboys, for he thought they were right. This made 
the Marquis very angry, and he said some ugly things about 
his neighbor, adding that he would shoot him the next time 
he met him. As soon as Roosevelt heard of this, he sprang 
on his horse and rode off at full speed to the Marquis's house. 
He strode in to where the Frenchman was sitting. 

•* I understand you said you would shoot me the next 
time you saw me," said the visitor. "Here I am, you can 
have the chance now.'* 

The Marquis didn*t shoot. In fact, after a talk over the 
quarrel, the two became very good friends. 

" I am not so fond of * bronco busting ' and riding wild 
horses as some people think," said Roosevelt, in later days. 
•' It wasn't because I liked that kind of work that I did it. 
But I always took just what came, and if it happened to be 
the wildest animal in the bunch, I got on, and stayed on, too, 
for when I got on I made up my mind to stay, and I have 
yet to see the bronco that could make me give in." 

Now let us go back to his political life. In April, 1897, 
Roosevelt became Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He liked 
the position, for it began to look very much like war with 
Spain, and he saw that there was plenty of work to do. 
That always suited him — plenty of work. 

He jumped into it The ships wanted fitting up. The 
gunners needed to be taught how to aim and fire. He made 
things boom. He asked for $800,000 for ammunition. It 
was given to him, and a few months later he asked for 
$500,000 more. *' What have you done with the $800,000 ?" 
he was asked. " Spent every cent of it for powder and shot 
and fired it all away." "And what are you going to do with 
the $500,000?" "Use it the same way, to teach the men 
how to shoot" 



2S« THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

In less than a year after that the men showed the good 
of Roosevelt's work, by their splendid aiming and firing in 
the battles of Manila Bay and off Santiago coast. 

But when war actually came, in May, 1898, wild horses 
'^ould not have kept Roosevelt at office work. He offered his 
resignation at once and asked to be appointed on General 
Lee*s staff. Then came the idea of the "Rough Riders'" 
Regiment — to be made up of cowboys, whom no horse could 
throw, and of daring riders from any quarter. *' Roosevelt's 
Rough Riders " they were called, and the title hit the popular 
fancy. The papers were full of it. 

No doubt, you know something of how he fought in 
Cuba, at Las Guasimas and in the terrible charge up San Juan 
Hill, in the face of the Spanish works. He was a fighter, 
out and out. He did not know what it was to be afraid. 
"You'd give a lifetime to see that man leading a charge or 
hear him yell," said one of his soldiers. "Talk about cour- 
age and grit and all that — he's got it." This is what a 
reporter says of the charge up San Juan Hill : 

" Roosevelt was a hundred feet ahead of his troops, yell- 
ing like a Sioux, while his own men and the colored cavalry 
cheered him as they charged up the hill. There was no stop- 
ping as men's neighbors fell, but on they went, faster and 
faster. Suddenly, Roosevelt's horse stopped, pawed the air 
for a moment, and fell in a heap. Before the horse was down 
Roosevelt disengaged himself from the saddle and, landing 
on his feet, again yelled to his men, and, sword in hand, 
charged on afoot." 

Colonel Roosevelt was the popular hero of the war. 
Everybody was talking of him, his boldness, his free and easy 
ways, his kindness to his men, his genial manner. When he 
got back to the United States, he found that men were talking 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 259 

of making him the next Governor of New York. They did, 
too. He went on the stump himself and made many speeches. 
On the night after the election he went to bed, not waiting for 
the returns, and was roused up about two o'clock in the morn- 
ing by men knocking hard on the front door. 

He came to the door with sleepy eyes. 

"What is the matter?" he asked. 

•*You*re elected by eighteen thousand." 

" Am I ? That's bully. Come in and tell mc about it." 

But after a few minutes he bade them good night, saying 
that he was so sleepy that he must go to bed again. 

We need not say that Governor Roosevelt did his work 
as well in the capitol as he had done in the legislature. 
*' Jobs" could not get past him. He put his foot down heavy 
on all sorts of rascality. He did not stay long in Albany, for 
he was soon wanted at Washington. When the Republican 
convention to nominate a candidate for President was held in 
1900, McKinley was the man wanted. But for Vice-President 
Roosevelt's was the most popular name. 

He did not want the office. He was coaxed to accept, 
and was fairly forced into it. He made a campaign of the 
country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, speaking for McKin- 
ley. Of course, McKinley won — he was bound to win — and 
Roosevelt won with him. This was in November, 1900. In 
September, 1901, the President was shot, and there came a 
great change in Roosevelt's career. On Friday morning, Sep- 
tember 13th, being told that the wounded President was out 
of danger, he left the hotel in the Adirondacks, where he was 
staying, for a long tramp in the mountains. Then came news 
that the President was dying and the Vice-President was 
wanted. It took hours to find him. It was nearly night when 
the guides and hunters came up to him, many miles away. 



26o THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

He was filled with surprise and grief when he was told 
the news. All that night he rode in a stagecoach to the 
nearest railroad station. When he got there he was startled 
to learn that McKinley had died three hours before and that 
he himself was now President of the United States. He had 
jumped from a do-nothing to a do-everything. 

No man ever liked better to go where he pleased and do 
what he pleased. It was felt necessary to keep guards and 
detectives near him, for fear some wretch might try to kill 
him as they had done McKinley. He hated this. He was 
afraid of nothing, and thought he could take care of himself, 
and the poor guards had a hard time keeping him in sight 
Sometimes he would give them the slip and ride away without 
their knowing it. Then he was happy. 

His first message to Congress, in December, 1901, was 
a great state paper, which gave everybody satisfaction. After 
reading it, people all over the country said, ** Roosevelt is a 
safe man. We can trust the country to him." 

President Roosevelt's home is near Oyster Bay, Long 
Island, New York. The house is full of trophies of his many 
hunting trips. It is situated on Cove Neck, three miles by 
carriage from the village of Oyster Bay. It is approached by 
a steep, winding roadway, which takes the visitor through a 
dense wood before revealing to him the house itself Once 
on the crest of the little hill which he has selected for his 
home, the visitor has a beautiful view in every direction, espe- 
cially to the north and east, where the waters of the Sound 
and Cold Spring harbor are seen. Around the house on all 
sides is a closely cropped lawn, studded with shade trees, big 
and little, and of many kinds. 

N. B. — Adding nineteen tu the last page number for the full-page haif-tones and color-plates not numbered will 
give the exact number of pages in the book. 



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